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OUR 
FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 



BY 



FARNHAM BISHOP 

AUTHOR OF 
PANAMA PAST AND PRESENT*' AND "THE STORY OF THE SUBMARINE' 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 






Copyright, 1916, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published August, 1916 




m 30 1916 




^CI.A437453 



PREFACE 

First Motor Battery, N. G. N. Y. 
state camp, peekskill, n. y. 

July, 1916. 

The sentry on Number Three Post 
passes as I write this. The collar of his 
O. D. shirt is turned up Hke an old-fash- 
ioned stock; the lean, brown profile under 
the bell-crowned forage-cap is that of an 
old-time Yankee. A voice somewhere be- 
hind me demands: ^'When are we going 
to Mexico?" It is '46 come back again. 

But across the parade-ground rolls the 
monstrous gray bulk of Battlecar B-i, 
a gray steel fortress on armored wheels, 
and up the slope from the Peekskill road 
comes a dashing, sputtering detachment 
of motor-cycle men. It is a far cry from 
the flintlocks and three-dollar horses — 
see Grant's ''Memoirs" — of seventy years 
ago. 

When we left our armory, some three 



PREFACE 

weeks ago, none doubted that our second 
war in Mexico was at hand. Some, com- 
paring the massacre of the troopers of the 
Tenth Cavalry at Carrizal with the cap- 
ture of Thornton's dragoons, beUeved that 
it had already begun. Now it seems to 
have been averted, at least temporarily, 
perhaps forever. It is no use trying to 
guess what is going to happen next in 
Mexico. 

It was the expectation of a second war, 
two years ago, that revived my own in- 
terest in the war of 1846-48. Most of its 
histories can be divided into two classes. 
First come those written immediately after 
the conclusion of peace. The authors of 
these painted everything red, white, and 
blue, and chanted songs of glory. Then 
come the histories written under what may 
be called Abolition influence. The authors 
of these painted everything coal black and 
passed by on the other side. 

Following in the footsteps of Mr. George 
L. Rives, who, in his splendid work, "The 
Relations Between the United States and 
Mexico, 1 821-1848," was the first to ap- 
proach the subject with scientific impar- 
vi 



PREFACE 

tiality, I have tried to give a fair account 
of the causes and events of our first war 
in Mexico. God grant there may never 
be a second I 

Farnham Bishop. 



vu 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Texas and the Kingdom of New 

Spain i 

II. The Mexican War of Independ- 
ence 10 

III. Migration of Americans to Texas 22 

IV. "Remember THE Alamo!" ... 35 
V. Mediation and Annexation . . 53 

VI. Causes of the War 65 t/ 

VII. Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palm a 80 

VIII. The Conquest of California . . 98 

IX. Monterey and Buena Vista . .114 

X. New Mexico and Chihuahua . . 138 

XI. Vera Cruz and Cerro Gordo . . 150 

XII. From Puebla to Churubusco . . 167 

XIII. The Fall of the City of Mexico . 184 

XIV. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hi- 

dalgo 200 

XV. The Results of the War . . . 210 

Index 219 

ix 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

General Scott's Entrance into Mexico . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Defence of the Alamo 46 

The Battle of Palo Alto 90 

The Battle of Buena Vista 132 

The Bombardment of Vera Cruz 1$'^^ 

The Battle of Cerro Gordo 164 

The Battle of Churubusco .174 

The Storming of Chapultepec— Pillow's Attack . . 192 

MAPS 

FACING PAGE 

The Kingdom of New Spain 6' 

Mexico in 184s ^2' 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

CHAPTER I 

TEXAS AND THE KINGDOM OF NEW 
SPAIN 

OUR first war in Mexico began in 
Texas and because of our annexation 
of Texas. And to fully understand the 
causes of that war we must turn back to 
the very beginning of Texan history, when 
Alvarez de Pineda discovered the land of 
the Tejas Indians and explored its coast in 

1519. 
Other Spaniards followed Piiieda, and 

in 1535 Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and his 
three companions performed the incredible 
feat of crossing not only Texas but the en- 
tire continent, from where they had been 
shipwrecked on the coast of Florida to a 
Spanish settlement on the Pacific. During 
the rest of the sixteenth century and most 
of the seventeenth the Spaniards confined 
themselves to sending various exploring 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

expeditions through Texas without making 
any attempt to settle there, for it was not 
the sort of country they chose to colonize. 

What the Spaniards wanted was a coun- 
try where there was plenty of gold, silver, 
or precious stones to enrich the royal trea- 
sury, and plenty of easily subdued Indians 
to be converted to Christianity and turned 
into slaves for their Spanish masters; in 
short, such a country as Cortez conquered 
in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. Where there 
was no easily portable wealth and the In- 
dians were too few to labor and too fierce 
to tame, the Spanish conquest stopped. 
There was no gold in Texas, and the sav- 
age Comanches that roamed and hunted on 
its prairies were no meek and lowly Mexican 
Indians. So Texas and all North America 
above Florida and New Mexico were left 
empty of Spaniards, who nevertheless as- 
serted their King's title to all the New 
World except Brazil, which had been given 
to Portugal as the rest of the three Amer- 
icas had been given to Spain by the Papal 
Bull of Alexander VI, in 1493. 

But as the power of Spain declined, 
various other nations pushed defiantly into 



TEXAS AND KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN 

the vacant spaces of North America; the 
English in Virginia and New England, the 
Dutch in New Amsterdam, the Swedes in 
Delaware, and the French in Canada. Fol- 
lowing the natural pathway of the St. Law- 
rence, the French explorers soon came to 
the Great Lakes, whence it is an easy port- 
age to the tributaries of the Mississippi. 
The banner of France was planted at the 
mouth of that river in 1682 by Robert 
Cavelier de La Salle, the first white man 
to descend it to the Gulf of Mexico. Two 
years later La Salle set sail from France 
with a small fleet for the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi, having persuaded Louis XIV of 
the ease and value of founding a colony 
there. But contrary winds and faulty 
navigation carried the French past their 
destination to Matagorda Bay, where they 
built a stockade and called it Fort St. 
Louis. This was the first European settle- 
ment in Texas. 

But starvation, disease, and hostile In- 
dians killed three-fourths of the garrison of 
Fort St. Louis, and when La Salle tried to 
return overland to Canada he was mur- 
dered by his own men in Texas in 1688. 

3 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Fort St. Louis was destroyed the following 
year, and the miserable survivors of the 
unfortunate French colonists were yielded 
up by their Indian captors to a Spanish 
expedition that carried them as prisoners 
to Mexico City. 

This attempt to found a French colony 
on Spanish soil was greatly resented both 
in Mexico and Madrid, for the corner- 
stone of the Spanish colonial system was 
the absolute exclusion of foreigners. Even 
Spaniards were not allowed to go to Amer- 
ica or Spanish-Americans from one colony 
to another without elaborate passports, 
most difficult to obtain. Trade was for- 
bidden between the different colonies or 
with any European country except Spain. 
Wc must remember that the Kingdom of 
New Spain, as the Spaniards called Mexico, 
was not a colony of European settlers and 
traders inhabiting a space cleared of hos- 
tile Indians, like Jamestown or Plymouth 
or New Amsterdam; it was a nation of 
semicivilized Indians, with only enough 
Spanish soldiers, priests, and government 
officials to keep them subjugated to the 
King of Spain and instruct them in the 

4 



TEXAS AND KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN 

Catholic faith. Instead of being extermi- 
nated by flintlock and fire-water to make 
room for a new race, the milhons of Mexican 
Indians simply exchanged the tyranny of 
the Montezumas for the tyranny of Spain, 
and that in turn for the tyranny of the mili- 
tary chiefs and the landowning oligarchy of 
modern Mexico — a tyranny that has come 
down essentially unbroken till our own time. 
To keep the French out of Texas the 
Spaniards attempted to found missions 
there. Each of these missions was a per- 
fect miniature of the whole Spanish colo- 
nial system. A few courageous friars, some- 
times with, oftener without, a guard of 
soldiers, would go out among a tribe of 
pagan Indians to convert them to Chris- 
tianity. As the converts increased in num- 
ber, they would build, under the direction 
of the friars and priests (many of whom 
were skilled architects and engineers), a 
chapel and a presidio for the garrison, round 
which would cluster the adobe huts of the 
converts, who no longer lived by hunting, 
but tilled and irrigated their own and their 
masters' fields. Presently the mission would 
become a pueblo, or village, and the chapel 

5 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

a parish church, or in some cases the cathe- 
dral of a new city on the broad map of the 
Kingdom of New Spain. 

But the Comanches were not ''Indios de 
paz," peaceful Indians fit to labor in the 
Lord's vineyard and the friars' fiel.d, but 
"Indios bravos/' who swept down on and 
destroyed the last trace of these earliest 
Texan missions before the end of the seven- 
teenth century. 

In the meanwhile the French had colon- 
ized Louisiana and founded New Orleans. 
Aware that any attempt to open a coast- 
wise trade with Mexico would only result 
in the capture and confiscation of the first 
French ship to venture into Vera Cruz, 
Governor Cadillac of Louisiana sent some 
French-Canadians across Texas to the 
nearest Spanish post on the Rio Grande in 
1714 to see if it would be possible to start 
an overland cattle trade between the two 
colonies. But the Spaniards threw the 
French emissaries into prison and founded 
new missions in Texas, some of them close 
to the French frontier settlement of Natch- 
itoches on the Red River. 

No further attempts were made by the 
6 




The Kingdom of New Spain. 



TEXAS AND KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN 

French to dispute the Spanish possession 
of Texas beyond a few futile raids during 
the brief Franco-Spanish War of 1719. A 
neighborly understanding grew up between 
the border settlements of the two colonies. 
The irksome prohibition of foreign trade 
bore Hghtly on these distant colonists of 
Spain. Indeed, as Bancroft declares: "Con- 
traband trade with the French seems to 
have been the occupation of all classes on 
the frontier, including the governor and 
perhaps even the friars." 

In 1762 the Seven Years' War and the 
empire of France in North America came 
to an end together. England had con- 
quered Canada and now received Florida 
from Spain, and from France all Louisiana 
east of the Mississippi except the "Island 
of New Orleans." That and Louisiana 
west of the river went to Spain. 

In 1800, by the Treaty of San Ildefonso, 
Spain returned Louisiana to France. Three 
years later France sold Louisiana to the 
United States. Immediately the question 
arose, Was Texas included in the Louisiana 
Purchase ^ 

Napoleon's government assured our com- 
7 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

missioners to Paris that such was the case; 
that the western boundary of French Louisi- 
ana had been not the Red River but the 
Rio Grande del Norte. But this claim was 
based solely on La Salle's brief occupation 
of Fort St. Louis, one hundred and nineteen 
years before, which was more than counter- 
balanced by the previous exploration and 
subsequent occupation of Texas by Spain. 
But because of these French pretensions 
and because they had heard much of La 
Salle but little of Alvarez de Pineda or the 
missions founded by the Franciscan friars, 
very many Americans, including Henry 
Clay and other leaders of public opinion, 
thought that Texas had been part of French 
Louisiana and so belonged to us. A gen- 
eration later this mistaken belief did much 
to bring about our annexation of Texas and 
first war with Mexico. 

President Monroe, who had been one of 
the American commissioners sent to Paris 
to arrange the Louisiana Purchase, had the 
matter thoroughly investigated when he 
negotiated the Florida Treaty with Spain 
in 1819. By this treaty the United States 
agreed to assume ^5,000,000 worth of un- 



TEXAS AND KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN 

collectible claims of American citizens 
against the Spanish crown in exchange for 
Florida, which Spain had taken from Great 
Britain during our Revolutionary War. 
And the United States renounced forever 
all ''rights, claims, and pretensions" to 
Texas based on the Louisiana Purchase. 

The Florida Treaty was ratified by our 
Senate after a debate of two days; by the 
Spanish Government after a delay of two 
years. On February 22, 1821, the treaty 
was signed in Washington. The southern 
boundary of the United States was fixed 
at the Sabine River and thence westward 
to the Pacific, as shown by the map facing 
p. 6. The vexatious Texas question was 
declared to be finally settled and a lasting 
boundary established between the United 
States and the Kingdom of New Spain. 

Forty-eight hours later General Iturbide 
proclaimed the independence of Mexico 
and the end of the Kingdom of New Spain. 



CHAPTER 'II 
THE MEXICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 

EVERY year on the i6th of Septem- 
ber the President of Mexico appears 
on the balcony In front of the National 
Palace and, while the great crowd that 
throngs the Cathedral Plaza keep perfect 
silence that all may hear, the chief magis- 
trate of the republic tolls an ancient church- 
bell — the liberty bell of Mexico. By that 
bell, when it hung in the belfry of the 
parish church of the little village of Dolores 
not far from the city of Guanajuato, the 
priest Hidalgo called his people together 
on Sunday, September i6, 1810, and urged 
them to revolt with the famous '"Grito 
de Dolores," or 'Try of Dolores": "Down 
with the wicked government ! Down with 
tyranny!" 

Mexico and the other Spanish colonies 
had already refused two years before to 
recognize Joseph Bonaparte, who had been 
forcibly placed on the throne of Spain by 

10 



MEXICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 

his brother Napoleon. Ferdinand VII, the 
rightful but worthless King of Spain, was 
in a French prison, and to him the heads 
of the army and church in Mexico swore 
allegiance, choosing in the meanwhile a 
viceroy from among their own number. 
But this separation from the mother coun- 
try, formal and temporary as it was meant 
to be, stirred the deep-rooted hatred of 
Spain and Spaniards in the hearts of the 
Indians, mixed-bloods, and even the Creoles 
— persons of pure Spanish descent who, be- 
cause they were colonial-born, were forbid- 
den to hold office and were in every way 
discriminated against in favor of the penin- 
sular-born Spaniard. 

The Cry of Dolores met with a wide- 
spread and prompt response. A rapidly in- 
creasing army assembled under the leader- 
ship of Hidalgo and the banner of Our 
Lady of Guadalupe.* The cities of Guana- 
juato, Guadalajara, San Bias, Zacatecas, 
San Luis Potosi, and many smaller places 
were captured by the insurgents, whose 
number swelled at one time to as many as 

* A shrine, much reverenced throughout Mexico, near Mexico 
City. 

II 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

eighty thousand men, mostly ignorant and 
untrained Indian laborers. Hidalgo and 
his peasant army were ultimately defeated 
and dispersed by one-tenth their number 
of well-drilled and well-handled Spanish 
troops at the Bridge of Calderon, June 17, 
181 1. Hidalgo and his principal officers 
were soon captured and promptly shot. 

For ten terrible years thereafter the 
War of Independence dragged on, no longer 
fought in the open field but by bands of 
guerillas, who too often degenerated into 
brigands. The Spanish troops held only 
the large cities and as much ground as 
their regiments covered on the march. 
The country was burned and pillaged by 
both sides, farms and villages depopulated, 
live stock slaughtered or driven off, the 
mines shut down while the flooded shafts 
caved in and the miners starved or went 
a-soldiering. Conditions in Mexico then 
were almost exactly like those in Cuba 
immediately before the Spanish-American 
War or in Mexico itself a hundred years 
later, after the downfall of Porfirio Diaz. 

The restoration of Ferdinand VII after 
the overthrow of Napoleon led to a deter- 

12 



MEXICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 

mined effort on the part of the Spanish 
Government to put down the revohs not 
only in Mexico but throughout Central and 
South America. But the expeditionary 
army that was assembled at Cadiz to be 
sent to the colonies suddenly mutinied 
under the leadership of Riego, and though 
their first leader was defeated and shot, the 
mutineers were soon joined by the greater 
part of the country. Much against his will, 
the reactionary Ferdinand VII was forced 
to restore and swear to uphold the liberal 
Constitution of 1812, which had been es- 
tablished by the provisional government 
during his captivity and promptly abolished 
after his restoration. 

The Spanish Cortes, or Parliament, was 
convened, and, according to the re-estab- 
lished Constitution, Mexico would have 
been entitled to thirty-seven representa- 
tives. But none were ever chosen. 

Almost the first action of the Spanish 
Cortes of 1820 was to reduce the oppres- 
sively heavy taxes paid by the people and 
make up the deficit by confiscating part of 
the enormous wealth of the church. The 
news of this and the danger to their own 

13 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

church property so alarmed the Mexican 
prelates that they promptly plotted with 
General Iturbide for the separation of New 
from Old Spain. The result of this clerico- 
military conspiracy was the proclamation 
of the independence of Mexico in the 
''Plan of Iguala," February 24, 1821. 

The church and the army between them 
had been the real rulers of Mexico from 
the beginning, and without them the royal 
authority had not a leg left to stand on. 
Though the King's flag still flew from the 
Castle of San Juan de Ulloa at Vera Cruz, 
the latest and last of the viceroys of Mex- 
ico, the Celto-Iberian O'Donoju, was un- 
able to set foot in the city itself when he 
arrived from Spain. Going inland under a 
safe-conduct, O'Donoju met Iturbide and 
the two signed the so-called Treaty of Cor- 
dova, August 21, 1821. By this treaty, 
which the Spanish Government refused to 
ratify, the Kingdom of New Spain was 
recognized as an independent constitutional 
monarchy to be called ''The Mexican Em- 
pire." The new imperial crown was to be 
offered to each male member of the Spanish 
royal family in succession, and if they all 

14 



MEXICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 

refused it the Mexican Cortes was to choose 
the Emperor. 

This programme was duly followed out, 
and, with the aid of a prearranged military- 
uprising near the Cortes at the psycholog- 
ical moment, Iturbide was elected and 
crowned as Augustin I, Emperor of Mexico. 
His reign was shorter in point of time but 
no less tragic in termination than either 
that of his predecessor, Montezuma, or his 
successor, Maximilian. The army had no 
use for Iturbide, and after ten months of 
his harsh but feeble reign his own soldiers 
forced his abdication on March 19, 1822. 
He was allowed to go to Europe, with the 
understanding that he was never to re- 
turn. But less than two years afterward 
the outbreak of fresh revolutions tempted 
Iturbide back to Mexico. Landing at Tam- 
pico with a few followers, the ex-Emperor 
was promptly arrested, court-martialled, 
and shot. His great-grandson. General 
Eduardo Iturbide, was for a few weeks in 
19 14 the governor of the federal district 
about Mexico City, before he was forced 
to become an exile in the United States. 

A constituent congress was assembled to 
15 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

devise a republican form of government 
for Mexico, and the result of its some- 
what hasty labors was the Constitution of 
1824, an instrument "curiously compounded 
of the Constitution of the United States 
— omitting the first ten amendments — 
and the Spanish (Cadiz) Constitution of 
1812."* 

The executive and legislative branches 
of the new government were closely pat- 
terned after those of the *' Anglo-Americans 
of the North/' There was to be a Presi- 
dent, elected every four years and with a 
suspensive power of veto; a Senate, with 
two members from each state, and a House 
of Deputies, with one member for every 
eighty thousand inhabitants. But the third 
branch of the government, the judiciary, 
was much weaker than with us; for, instead 
of leaving to the Supreme Court the inter- 
pretation of the Constitution (the corner- 
istone on which Chief Justice Marshall and 
his successors were to build up the mighty 
power of our Federal courts), the Mexicans 
decided that their Congress alone had the 
right to "resolve doubts which may occur 

* Rives, I, 42. 
16 



MEXICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 

about the meaning of the articles of this 
Constitution." 

The most striking difference between 
ours and the Mexican Constitution of 1824 
was the establishment by the latter of a 
state religion and the spirit of religious in- 
tolerance. The very first article, trans- 
lated, reads as follows: 

"The religion of the Mexican nation is 
and shall be the Catholic, apostolic, Roman 
(faith). The nation is to protect it by wise 
and just laws, and prohibit the exercise of 
any other." 

This clause, moreover, so it was declared, 
was never to be amended. 

Nothing was said about negro slavery, 
but the slave-trade had been abolished by 
statute a few months before. Negroes were 
very rare in Mexico, enslaved or free, be- 
cause of the abundance of cheap Indian 
labor. Though Indian slavery had been 
abolished in early colonial times, a great 
part of the poor people of Mexico were 
peons — workmen who had become indebted 
to their masters for money advanced on 
exorbitant interest and who spent the rest 
of their lives working for their creditors, 

17 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

who found it both easy and profitable to 
keep the ignorant, pleasure-loving peons in 
perpetual debt. This peonage was prac- 
tically slavery, but nothing was said about 
it in the Constitution of 1824. 

The most obvious weakness of the new 
republic was its artificial federalism. Like 
every other Spanish-American country at 
the time, Mexico enthusiastically copied 
many features of the government of the 
United States of America. But, unlike the 
thirteen British colonies, the Kingdom of 
New Spain had always been a single ad- 
ministrative unit, with a strong centralized 
government in a great capital city that 
dominated the rest of Mexico as Paris 
dominates France. The logical develop- 
ment after the War of Independence would 
have been a centralized republic; which 
many Mexicans desired. But the majority 
of the constituent congress, admiring the 
form of the American Union but ignoring 
the fact of Mexican unity, carved their 
country up into states, none of which had 
had any previous separate existence. Texas 
and Coahuila together made one huge, 
sparsely populated state. 



MEXICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 

Hundreds of Americans, eager for ad- 
venture, had fought in Texas during the 
War of Independence on the side of the 
insurgents against Spain. These American 
fihbusters played an important part in the 
capture of the two principal Texas towns, 
La Bahia (GoHad) and San Antonio de 
Bexar. They protested vehemently against 
the proposed execution in cold blood of two 
captured Spanish governors and twelve of 
their officers, and many of the Americans 
left in disgust when their Mexican allies, 
after promising to have these prisoners sent 
safely home to Spain, had the Spaniards' 
throats cut by their own escort. Yet no 
less than eight hundred and fifty Americans 
fought on the Mexican side in the disas- 
trous defeat near San Antonio that led to 
the recapture of all the towns, followed by 
savage reprisals on the part of the Spanish 
troops. 

Guerilla warfare was waged in Texas not 
only by land but by sea. Jean Lafitte, the 
famous "Pirate of the Gulf," whose men 
had served Andrew Jackson's field-guns at 
the battle of New Orleans, seized the island 
of Galveston as a headquarters for his fleet 

19 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

of privateers, sailing under the Mexican 
and various South American flags. Because 
it captured too many ships of neutral 
nations and was indeed Httle better than a 
nest of pirates, Lafitte's colony was broken 
up in 1 82 1 by the United States brig Enter- 
prise, 

Another picturesque and premature at- 
tempt to found an American colony in 
Texas was made by James Long, who had 
been a surgeon in the United States Army. 
With three hundred of his countrymen 
Long actually set up and proclaimed an 
independent "Republic of Texas," with a 
complete civil government and even a 
newspaper. But within four months after 
its foundation, in 1821, Long's republic 
was broken up and dispersed by a detach- 
ment of Spanish troops. When the last 
Spanish soldier withdrew from Texas the 
country was almost as devoid of white in- 
habitants as it had been at the beginning 
of the sixteenth or end of the seventeenth 
century. 

"By the time that Mexican Independence 
was fairly achieved," says Mr. Rives, 
"Texas was almost depopulated. The 
20 



MEXICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 

Spanish troops and the horse Indians be- 
tween them had very nearly succeeded in 
destroying every semblance of cultivated 
and civiHzed life. A few destitute people 
still lingered about Bexar (San Antonio) 
and La Bahia (Goliad) and some few in 
and near what had once been Nacog- 
doches. Otherwise the country was de- 
serted. Its wide and fertile expanse lay in 
the sight of all men, a huge and tempting 
prize for whosoever, Mexican or foreigner, 
was skilful enough or bold enough to take 
it." 



21 



CHAPTER III 
MIGRATION OF AMERICANS TO TEXAS 

MOSES AUSTIN was a Connecticut 
Yankee with a roving foot that 
carried him across even the sacred border 
of the Kingdom of New Spain. But in 
Louisiana, where Austin first settled in 
1798, the exclusion of foreigners had never 
been as absolute as in the other Spanish 
colonies, for Louisiana had originally been 
French and many Frenchmen remained 
there after 1762. Besides, the whole east 
bank of the Mississippi above New Orleans 
was British territory. English ships had 
the right to navigate the river even to its 
source, and soon after the Revolution 
Yankee flatboatmen floated down-stream 
and Yankee trappers and traders drifted 
overland in constantly increasing numbers. 
Though these intruders were not always 
welcome, the Spanish authorities in Louisi- 
ana could not keep them out, and toward 
the end actually granted tracts of land to 

22 



MIGRATION OF AMERICANS TO TEXAS 

settlers from the United States, such as 
Moses Austin. And when, after twenty 
years' residence in what is now the State of 
Missouri, Austin found himself back in the 
Union and in need of money, he naturally 
migrated again, this time to Texas. 

Riding across the empty prairies to San 
Antonio de Bexar, Austin asked Governor 
Martinez for a tract of land on which to 
settle three hundred families from Louisi- 
ana. Martinez, who at first angrily ordered 
Austin out of the country, joined with the 
ayuntamientOy or town council, in a petition 
to the authorities at Mexico City to grant 
Austin's request. With this grant in his 
pocket and his life-work done, Austin re- 
turned to Missouri and died there June 
lo, 1821, in the fifty-seventh year of his 
age. The city of Austin, the capital of 
Texas, commemorates his name and that 
of his son, Stephen Fuller Austin, who 
carried on his work. 

"The glorious news of the independence 
of Mexico" greeted young Austin as he 
rode into Bexar, and sent him post-haste to 
Mexico City. Scarcely had the Emperor 
Iturbide affirmed the viceroy's grant to the 
23 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Austins by the Imperial Colonization Act 
of 1823 than the Mexican Empire ended its 
short Hfe, and the work had to be done over 
again with the republican authorities. But 
by the National Colonization Act of 1824 
Austin finally obtained the fullest powers. 

As an empresarioy or contractor, with the 
government who undertook to settle two 
hundred or more families in Texas, Austin 
was to receive a certain amount of public 
land for himself. Every settler was to be 
given either a 177-acre farm or a cattle 
range of over 4,000 acres. All colonists 
were to be exempt for six years, not only 
from ordinary taxation but from the Mex- 
ican tariff, which prohibited the importa- 
tion of many necessities and placed a very 
high duty on most of the rest — an unin- 
telligent relic of the Spanish colonial sys- 
tem. Except for this exemption, it would 
have been impossible for the Texan colo- 
nists to have procured ploughs, clothing, or 
provisions without wholesale smuggling, for 
almost nothing was then manufactured in 
Mexico and the lack of roads made food- 
stuffs scarce and dear. 

Another important exemption was the 
24 



MIGRATION OF AMERICANS TO TEXAS 

suspension, as far as concerned Texas, of 
the law abolishing negro slavery. Austin 
insisted on this because, though he himself 
was opposed to slavery on principle, he fore- 
saw that most of his colonists would be 
Southerners; also, he believed that the fu- 
ture wealth of Texas lay in the cultivation 
of cotton, then thought impossible without 
forced negro labor. Immigrants were there- 
fore permitted to bring their own slaves 
with them, but these negroes were not to 
be resold and their children were to be born 
free. 

The only things required of white im- 
migrants into Texas were: first, that they 
should be Roman Catholics; second, that 
they should show a certificate of good char- 
acter from their home authorities; and, 
finally, that they take the oath of allegi- 
ance to Mexico. No provision was made 
for stopping undesirable immigrants at the 
frontier or for the trial and deportation of 
any unlawful residents. The Federal Gov- 
ernment of Mexico simply left it all to 
Austin and washed its hands of Texas for 
the next six years. 

The Mexicans seem to have thought that 
25 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

because the Austins had come from Louisi- 
ana the settlers they proposed to bring 
into Texas would be from there also, of 
Latin blood and the Catholic faith. But 
those who came were typical American 
frontiersmen of the period, who knew little 
of any church and least of all the Roman 
Catholic. Otherwise, they were ideal colo- 
nists from Austin's point of view, and he 
naturally let down the bars. 

"I wish the settlers to remember," he 
declared in a public address, ^'that the 
Roman Catholic is the religion of this na- 
tion. . . . We must all be particular and 
respect the Catholic religion." But noth- 
ing was said about its being obligatory. 

The religious qualification being ignored 
so calmly, the other two were very easily 
met. The certificate of good character the 
settler was supposed to bring with him from 
his home authorities was usually obtained 
after his arrival in Texas from the nearest 
alcalde or petty magistrate, ""on the testi- 
mony of two bystanders and the payment 
of a dollar and a half."* As for the oath of 
allegiance, it was easy to take but difficult 

* Kennedy's "Texas," I, 339. 
26 



MIGRATION OF AMERICANS TO TEXAS 

for a feeble government in far-away Mexico 
City to enforce. 

Settlers poured in rapidly. Eight new 
empresarios were given contracts by the 
State of Coahuila, to whom the public 
lands had been turned over by the federal 
authorities, and these contractors are said 
to have brought in some three thousand 
families. Two of these colonies were Irish 
and there were many Germans, but these 
elements soon amalgamated with the na- 
tive-born Americans, exactly as in the 
United States. Thousands of other im- 
migrants came over the border of their own 
accord, and squatted on the first vacant 
site that struck their fancy. Their "right 
there was none to dispute." 

Entirely neglected by the Mexican Gov- 
ernment, the American settlers in -Texas 
shifted for themselves and flourished ex- 
ceedingly. They laid out the rough trails 
over which men brought their families and 
chattels, at first on horse and mule back, 
later in wagons, overland from Natchi- 
toches in Louisiana, or up from Galveston 
Bay and the other ports where the sailing- 
vessels came from New Orleans or New 

27 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

York. These Anglo-Saxon colonists needed 
no friar architects to design their log cabins 
for them or troops to defend them against 
the Comanches. They paid no taxes and 
received nothing in return. The earher 
mission schools having greatly decayed, the 
Texans estabhshed rude ones of their own 
wherever a few children could be gathered 
together and an itinerant teacher found to 
instruct them. Towns and villages arose, 
with American officials bearing Spanish 
titles, American general stores well stocked 
with goods from the United States, Amer- 
ican lawyers, doctors, and. of course, Amer- 
ican newspapers. 

While the Mexican population of Texas 
remained nearly stationary, the number of 
Americans doubled every few years. In 
1825 there were about 7,000 people in Texas, 
almost equally divided between the two 
races; two years later the population had 
risen to 10,000 and the Americans outnum- 
bered the Mexicans by 5 to 3. By 1830 
there were something like 20,000 Americans 
in Texas, including 1,000 negro slaves. 
That these were not more numerous was 
because Texas had become a country of 

28 



MIGRATION OF AMERICANS TO TEXAS 

small farms and ranches instead of large 
cotton plantations as Austin had expected. 
A Coahuila state statute forbidding slavery 
had been avoided by bringing negroes in 
as peons, and when President Guerrero's 
government passed a national emancipa- 
tion act in 1829 the resentment of the 
Texans was so great that Texas, which had 
the only slaves in Mexico, was specially 
exempted. 

This defiance of the national authority 
and the menace to Mexico of the strong 
foreign colony that had grown up within its 
borders were keenly felt by the new secre- 
tary of foreign affairs who now took office 
under President Bustamante, Don Lucas 
Ignacio Alaman. A well-educated man and 
author of a valuable history of his own 
country, Alaman had a strangely distorted 
idea of the government and history of the 
United States. Disregarding the limited 
powers of our Federal Government and the 
varying policies of different parties and ad- 
ministrations, Alaman believed that from 
the foundation of our Republic the Amer- 
ican people had systematically conspired to 
make themselves masters of the entire 

29 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Western hemisphere. With this end in 
view, he declared the authorities at Wash- 
ington had secretly promoted the coloni- 
zation of Texas with Americans who, when 
they were strong enough, would declare 
their independence as a preliminary to 
being taken into the Union. 

But we know that Moses Austin left 
Louisiana for Texas not to extend the 
boundaries of the United States but to get 
outside them. He received no more aid 
from the Federal Government than would 
Ichabod Crane have received from the se- 
lectmen of Sleepy Hollow had he realized 
his vision of "the blooming Katrina, with 
a whole family of children, mounted on 
the top of a wagon loaded with household 
trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling 
beneath and . . . himself bestriding a pac- 
ing mare with a colt at her heels, setting 
out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord 
knows where." The lure of "immense 
tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in 
the wilderness" set the laziest Anglo-Saxon 
a-roving without help or hinderance from 
the authorities he left behind him. But 
such initiative on the part of the individual 
30 



MIGRATION OF AMERICANS TO TEXAS 

and indifference on the part of his govern- 
ment were totally incomprehensible to the 
Spanish-American of the early nineteenth 
century, bred in the paternal colonial sys- 
tem of Spain. The measures that Alaman 
now took for curbing the Americans iii 
Texas were typical of that system. 

Troops were to be sent into Texas to 
overawe the colonists and enforce respect 
for the authority of Mexico. No more 
slaves were to enter the country, nor any 
more foreigners without proper passports. 
The Colonization Act of 1824 was repealed, 
the Federal Government took charge of the 
public lands again and made every effort 
to create settlements of native Mexicans 
thereon. But free Mexican citizens re- 
fused to go to Texas on any terms, and the 
wretched convicts who were sent there in 
chains and at great expense soon ran away 
or were killed by the Indians. In spite of 
everything, Texas became more American 
and less Mexican every day. 

The privilege of free trade that the colo- 
nists had enjoyed since 1823 was now de- 
clared at an end, and the Mexican tariff, 
which absolutely prohibited the importa- 

31 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

tion of many necessary articles and placed 
a very high duty on almost everything else, 
was now, with certain exceptions, to be ap- 
plied to Texas. This impossible combina- 
tion of a protective tariff with an almost 
utter lack of home industries was a direct 
legacy from colonial Spain, and a scholar 
and statesman like Senor Alaman might 
well have paused before reviving it. He 
should have remembered how the dearth of 
Spanish goods had forced the Spanish colo- 
nists from Texas to Peru either to do with- 
out or to trade with foreign smugglers (see 
page 4). He should have remembered the 
tragic results of the spasmodic attempts of 
the Spanish authorities to stop this smug- 
gling by savage attacks on the free-traders 
— the blazing cities and sunken galleons 
that paid for the treacherous destruction of 
Francis Drake's and John Hawkins's trad- 
ing fleet in the harbor of Vera Cruz; the 
sack of Panama by the buccaneers after 
they had been forbidden by the Spaniards 
to hunt the wild cattle of the West Indian 
islands and so turned to Spaniard-hunting; 
and the War of Jenkins's Ear. He should 
have realized that the American-born Tex- 

32 



MIGRATION OF AMERICANS TO TEXAS 

ans and the coastwise skippers who sup- 
pHed their wants were of the same fighting 
stock as Drake and the buccaneers, and that 
when the Texans needed new ploughs, which 
they could not buy in Mexico and were for- 
bidden to import from the United States, 
it would take more than a few hundred 
half-breed Mexican conscripts scattered 
along the coast to suspend the law of sup- 
ply and demand. 

The climax came when Colonel Brad- 
burn, the Kentucky-born commander of the 
Mexican post at Anahuac on Galveston 
Bay lost his temper after two years of con- 
stant bickerings, and in May, 1832, ar- 
rested and imprisoned without warrant 
seven prominent Texans to overawe the 
smugglers and their sympathizers. Instead, 
the neighborhood rose, besieged the fort, 
and sent to Brazoria for two cannon with 
which the trading schooner Sabine had been 
bidding equal defiance to custom-house 
oflficers and soldiers. The only way to bring \ 
the guns from Brazoria to Anahuac was by 
sea, and this the commander of the little 
Mexican post at Velasco, at the mouth of 
the Sabine, very properly refused to per- 

33 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

mit. So the Texans turned the two guns 
on Velasco and bombarded and captured the 
fort, with a loss of several lives on both 
sides. This affair was regarded as a pre- 
liminary to an assault on Anahuac and 
civil war seemed unavoidable. 

Then suddenly the Anahuac prisoners 
were released without a fight, Colonel Brad- 
burn went home to Kentucky, and the 
Mexican garrisons were withdrawn from 
every post in Texas except Bexar. A new 
revolution had broken out in Mexico; Bus- 
tamante was no longer President nor Sefior 
Alaman Secretary of Foreign Affairs. There 
was a new President in Mexico City, the 
victorious and popular young General 
Santa Anna. 



34 



CHAPTER IV 

"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

ANTONIO LOPEZ DE SANTA ANNA 
jTx was born in the city of Jalapa on 
February 21, 1795, of sufficiently gentle 
blood to be given a cadetship in the royal 
army at the age of fifteen. The outbreak 
of the War of Independence found him 
fighting in the royalist ranks, where he re- 
mained to the end, by which time he was a 
lieutenant-colonel. He was a ''Tory" of 
the deepest dye, and it was no love of na- 
tional liberty but a shrewd desire to keep 
on the side of the army and the church that 
made him hasten to join Iturbide after the 
proclamation of the Plan of Iguala. 

Santa Anna's first chance to distinguish 
himself came in 1829 when Ferdinand VII 
of Spain, still stubbornly refusing to recog- 
nize the independence of Mexico, made a 
ridiculous attempt to reconquer that coun- 
try of 7,000,000 inhabitants with an army 
of 3,000 men. Deserted by its fleet and rav- 

35 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

aged by yellow fever, the Spanish expedi- 
tionary force was easily cooped up in Tam- 
pico and forced to surrender by a much 
larger Mexican army under General Santa 
Anna. Hailed as the hero and savior of his 
country, Santa Anna soon made himself 
President by heading what was in name a 
revolution but in fact nothing but a sordid 
mutiny of military office-seekers. After he 
was in power the difficulty of finding enough 
jobs for his followers and other internal af- 
fairs of Mexico gave Santa Anna no time 
to attend to Texas for the next three years. 
In the meanwhile a general convention 
of Texans met at San Felipe, in the fall of 
1832, to consider the best course of action 
to follow after the bloodshed at Velasco 
and the departure of the Mexican troops. 
Some voted for war and a declaration of 
independence, but the majority of the dele- 
gates decided that Texas should stand on 
her rights under the Mexican Constitution 
of 1824, the upholding and enforcement of 
which had been the ostensible cause of 
Santa Anna's revolution. It would be 
enough, they decided, if Texas were sepa- 
rated from Coahuila and erected into a 

36 



"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

state. Petitions to the Federal Govern- 
ment for the granting of statehood and the 
repeal of Alaman's laws of 1830 were ac- 
cordingly drafted. A second convention, 
called for by the first, met in March, 1833, 
adopted a tentative constitution and sent 
Stephen Fuller Austin to press the claims 
of Texas at Mexico City. 

But the utmost that Austin could accom- 
plish there was the removal of the ban on 
immigration from the United States, which 
only kept out peaceful settlers and attracted 
the adventurous. And when Austin at- 
tempted to return home he was arrested on 
the road, taken back to Mexico City, and 
locked up in the old prison of the Inquisition 
on no definite charge but a general suspicion 
of treasonable conspiracy. The proceedings 
in Texas, though perfectly regular and un- 
derstandable from an American point of 
view and in accord with the spirit of popu- 
lar government that theoretically prevailed 
in Mexico, were totally incomprehensible 
to the mediaeval-minded soldier-politicians 
of the capital. They were particularly 
alarmed and mystified by the name and 
purpose of a '* convention," regarding it 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

as a new and dangerous kind of conspiracy 
against authority. The political knowl- 
edge of Santa Anna and his gallant col- 
leagues seems to have been on a par with 
that of their contemporaries, the mutinous 
Royal Guard of Spain, who, when asked by 
Queen Isabella to define the constitution 
they were shouting for, scratched their 
heads and replied: 

*'Carramba ! We don't know. They say 
it Is a good thing and will raise our pay 
and make salt cheaper."* 

An offer on the part of President Andrew 
Jackson for the purchase of Texas by the 
United States for ^5,000,000 made at this 
time, with no ulterior purpose, was so grossly 
mismanaged by the incompetent and un- 
scrupulous American minister to Mexico as 
to confirm the Mexicans' belief in Alaman's 
theory of an "American conspiracy" (see 
page 29) and strengthen their resolve to 
take strong measures with the Texans. 
' Anahuac was regarrisoned and its custom- 
house re-established in 1835. William B. 
Travis, a daredevil Texan, with a party of 
kindred spirits swooped down on the place 

♦John Hay, "Castilian Days," p. 171. 

38 



"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

and took it without a fight, the captured 
garrison amicably joining in a Fourth-of- 
July froHc with their captors and neigh- 
bors before being shipped back to Mexico. 
When Santa Anna demanded that Travis 
and four other ringleaders in the affair be 
yielded up, together with a native Mexican 
called Zavala, who was a personal enemy of 
Santa Anna's and a warm friend of Austin's, 
the colonists refused to surrender these 
men to certain death. Austin himself was 
now released from prison and came home 
on an American schooner, that not only 
beat off the attack of a Mexican revenue 
cutter just before reaching port but put 
out with reinforcements and captured the 
cutter next day. Then on top of these 
petty scufflings fell a mighty political thun- 
derbolt. 

By a simple act of a subservient congress 
Santa Anna set aside the constitution he 
had sworn to uphold, abolished the federal 
system and the governments of the different 
states, and made Mexico a centralized re- 
public. Texas was separated from Coahuila 
and made a mere administrative depart- 
ment, subservient to an all-powerful con- 

39 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

gress and President in Mexico City. This 
destruction of states' rights might mean lit- 
tle to most native Mexicans to whom state- 
hood was an artificial creation of the last 
decade, but it was different with the Tex- 
ans, most of whom came from the Southern 
States of the American Union — common- 
wealths strong in their belief in states' rights 
and local patriotism. A third general con- 
vention was assembled, and to spare the 
Mexicans' feelings it was called a "consul- 
tation." But before this consultation met, 
on October 15, hostilities had begun in 
earnest. 

A detachment of Mexican troops sent 
by the commander of the garrison at Bexar 
to seize a brass six-pounder belonging to 
the Texans at the village of Gonzales was 
met and defeated by the "embattled farm- 
ers" and ranchmen there assembled for its 
defense. Another body of colonists cap- 
tured the well-stored but unguarded Mex- 
ican arsenal in the old mission at Goliad, 
even as Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain 
boys had surprised Ticonderoga. War was 
now inevitable. Even the peace-loving 
Austin took the field at the head of an im- 
40 



"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

provised volunteer army that marched 
against Bexar, where General Cos, who had 
been sent by Santa Anna to subdue the 
Texans, had arrived just in time to learn 
of the affair at Gonzales. Austin's force 
encamped a little distance outside Bexar; 
Cos sallied forth, attacked the camp, and 
was driven back into the town with heavy 
loss. But when Austin ordered an assault 
upon Bexar, his men politely but firmly re- 
fused. Except that they were well armed 
— the Texans' rifles were vastly superior to 
the muskets of the Mexican conscripts — 
Austin would have been justified in saying 
of his army before Bexar what Washington 
had said of the American army at Cam- 
bridge sixty years before: '^A hardy militia, 
brave and patriotic, but illy armed, undis- 
ciplined, unorganized, and wanting in al- 
most everything necessary for successful 
war." 

Much to his relief, Austin was sent to 
the United States with two others as agents 
of the provisional government established 
by the "consultation." After hesitating 
for five weeks to attack regular troops in 
such a strong position, volunteers sprang 

41 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

forward in the Texan camp on the night 
of December 3, when a grizzled veteran of 
the Mexican War of Independence cried: 
"Who will go with old Ben Milam into 
San Antonio ?" 

San Antonio de Bexar was a typical 
Spanish-American town, with streets run- 
ning at right angles from its two plazas, 
which were surrounded with thick-walled 
stone buildings, whose flat roofs, with their 
breast-high parapets, were well adapted for 
defense. Barricades, on many of which 
were mounted cannon, closed the ends of 
the streets and the entrances to the plazas, 
musketeers thronged the roofs and the 
loopholed walls, and it would have been 
no easy task for undrilled men without 
bayonets to charge down the streets and 
make a frontal attack on the barricades. 
Very wisely the Texans did nothing of the 
kind, but tunnelled through the buildings, 
battering their way through the flimsy par- 
tition walls with heavy logs, driving the 
defenders before them from room to room, 
house to house, street to street, for five 
days and nights, beginning at the adobe 
huts on the outskirts and ending on the 
42 



"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

roofs of the buildings on the two plazas. 
From these vantage-points Milam's men, 
who had lost their leader but won the town, 
could fire down on the rear of the now use- 
less barricades. General Cos and what was 
left of his army fled across the river and 
sought refuge in the ruined mission of San 
Antonio, which, from the Spanish name of 
the Cottonwood grove in which it stood, was 
called the Alamo. There General Cos sur- 
rendered and he and his soldiers were al- 
lowed to return to Mexico on parole, having 
given their word of honor not to fight again 
against Texas. 

Even after the Mexican troops had been 
driven across the Rio Grande the Texans 
still hesitated to declare their independence, 
hoping that the native "federal party of 
the interior" might now overthrow Santa 
Anna and restore the Constitution of 1824. 
But as the winter passed it became increas- 
ingly clear that Santa Anna had put down 
all his foes in Mexico, and was assembling 
the largest possible army for the invasion 
and reconquest of Texas. To resist him 
there were only the weak garrisons at 
Goliad and Bexar, and at Gonzales a little 

43 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

army with a constantly changing person- 
nel under General Houston. 

Big Sam Houston, who as a Tennessee 
mihtiaman had charged with Andrew Jack- 
son over the Creek Indians' log ramparts at 
Horseshoe Bend, where he had been se- 
verely wounded and earned a commission 
in the regular army for his gallantry, was a 
strange and picturesque figure. He had 
been governor of Tennessee, he had lived 
for years as a drunken outcast among the 
Cherokee Indians; he was six feet four 
inches in height, and "rejoiced in a cata- 
mount-skin waistcoat." But for all his ec- 
centricities the new commander-in-chief of 
the Texan forces was a born fighter and a 
trained soldier. General Houston fully 
realized the necessity of concentrating his 
scattered detachments before Santa Anna 
could strike and destroy them separately, 
and message after message was sent order- 
ing Travis and Bowie at the Alamo and 
Fannin at Goliad to fall back on the main 
body. But discipline was scarcer than 
courage in the Texan ranks, and with a 
folly as splendid as that of Sir Richard 
Grenville at the battle of the "Revenge," 
44 



"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

Travis stuck to his post, declaring that he 
was ''determined to sustain himself as long 
as possible and die like a soldier who never 
forgets what is due to his own honor or 
that of his country." 

Santa Anna invaded Texas with 6,000 
men, including General Cos and his fol- 
lowers, who made no bones about breaking 
their parole. The advance-guard crossed 
the Rio Grande on February 12, 1836, and 
a fortnight later they were in Bexar. 

Travis and Bowie made no attempt to 
hold the town, for their force, less than 200 
all told, was not strong enough even to line 
the walls of the mission courtyard, one end 
of which was formed by the sturdy, roofless 
ruin of the little chapel of St. Anthony, 
that we call the Alamo. The little band of 
Texans having refused to surrender, on 
Sunday, March 6, 2,000 Mexican infantry, 
under the eyes of the President of the Re- 
public, stormed the Alamo. The outer en- 
closure was quickly carried through the 
breaches in its walls, but the chapel had to 
be conquered inch by inch, by bayonet 
against rifle butt and hunting-knife, till the 
last of the garrison lay dead in the last 

45 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

blood-stained corner. Travis fell among 
the first in the open courtyard; Bowie, sick 
with pneumonia, was butchered with the 
other patients in the hospital. No man sur- 
rendered, no man escaped. It is from the 
Mexicans themselves we have this story of 
nineteenth-century Americans who, bound 
by no Spartan law but the pride of race, 
died like Leonidas and his three hundred. 
''Thermopylae had its messengers of de- 
feat; the Alamo had none." 

Colonel Fannin, commanding the Texan 
garrison at Goliad, disregarding Houston's 
repeated orders and the terrible warning 
of the fall of the Alamo, delayed his re- 
treat until the 19th of March. Impeded 
with ox-carts, clumsy artillery, and a long 
train of non-combatants, Fannin's men were 
overtaken in a few hours by the Mexican 
cavalry and forced to intrench themselves 
on the open prairie five miles from the near- 
est water-supply. Resistance was hope- 
less, and Fannin surrendered next day, after 
the Mexican officers had promised that the 
Americans' lives should be spared, and that 
the greater number of Fannin's men, who 
had recently come from the United States, 
46 




Defence of the Alamo. 



"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

should be allowed to return there. Taken 
back to Goliad, the captured Americans 
were Imprisoned there for a week, at the 
end of which time all the able-bodied men 
among them were led out, with their knap- 
sacks on their backs, under a strong escort 
of Mexican infantry and marched away, 
as they supposed, toward the seacoast and 
home. But when they had gone a few miles 
out on the open prairie the escort stepped 
back, raised their muskets, and deliberately 
shot down every prisoner, except a few who 
escaped by running away or by hiding 
among the dead. Returning to Goliad, the 
same soldiers dragged out and massacred 
the American sick and wounded, including 
Colonel Fannin, who is said to have been 
the last man executed. This cold-blooded 
butchery took place on Palm Sunday, three 
weeks after the fall of the Alamo, and by 
the direct orders of President Santa Anna. 

"In this war," he had written one of his 
officers, ''there are no prisoners." 

In justice to Santa Anna we must re- 
member that the custom of shooting pris- 
oners of war had long been followed by the 
Spaniards in America, that it was almost 
47 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

universal on both sides during the Mexican 
War of Independence, when 14 Spanish 
officers had been killed in Texas by their 
own escort, under precisely similar circum- 
stances to the slaughter of Fannin's men 
(see page 19), and that it still prevails in 
Mexico to-day. With certain rare excep- 
tions, honorably distinctive but shamefully 
few, every victorious general of Mexico 
from Cortez to Pancho Villa has stained his 
hands as red as Santa Anna's with his pris- 
oners' blood. 

Houston's army had already evacuated 
Gonzales on March 14, and was in full re- 
treat to the northeast. Panic-stricken by 
the savagery of the invaders, the greater 
part of the people of Texas left their homes, 
burning all that they could not carry or 
drive away with them, and fled before 
Santa Anna's advancing columns to the 
Louisiana frontier and the protection of 
the United States. The new-born govern- 
ment of the Republic of Texas, that had 
declared its independence on the ist of 
March, abandoned its capital at Harris- 
burg, which was occupied on April 16 by 
Santa Anna with only 750 men. Incau- 
48 



"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

tious haste, lack of provisions, bad roads, 
and faulty equipment had scattered the rest 
of his 6,000 far and wide over the broad 
surface of Texas. Reahzing this, Houston 
stopped his retreat and led his impatient 
little army back to strike a decisive blow. 
After a good deal of marching and counter- 
marching the two forces came face to face 
by the banks of the San Jacinto River, 
not far from where it flows into Galveston 
Bay. 

Instead of pressing his attack, Houston 
let the first day pass with only slight skir- 
mishing, for which he has been blamed by 
most military critics, as the delay per- 
mitted Santa Anna to be joined that night 
by General Cos, whose reinforcements 
brought the Mexican army up to about 
1,200 men, i field-piece, and 3 generals. 
The Texans numbered about 800, 90 of 
whom were mounted, and they had a bat- 
tery of 2 iron four-pounders, presented by 
sympathetic citizens of Cincinnati. 

In the heart of the enemies' country, with 
a deep swamp in his rear and a hostile army 
in his front, which was protected only by 
a flimsy barricade of baggage and pack- 

49 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

saddles, Santa Anna calmly retired to his 
tent for his usual midday nap. His sol- 
diers either followed their chiefs example, 
played cards, or cooked their dinners, their 
guns unloaded, their bayonets unfixed. At 
high noon on the 21st of April the Texans 
filed quietly out of their camp and formed 
in line behind an "island of timber." Two 
shots from the four-pounders sent the 
pack-saddles flying, a single volley crashed 
from the Texan rifles, and while it still 
rang in Santa Anna's startled ears, Houston 
and his 800 came roaring over the barri- 
cade, beating down the defenders with 
clubbed rifles and shouting vengefully: 
"Remember Travis! Remember Bowie! 
Remember Goliad ! Remember the Alamo !" 
There was no fighting and no defense 
worth speaking of at the so-called battle 
of San Jacinto, though that in no way de- 
tracts from the credit of Houston and his 
Texans. Utterly surprised and deserted by 
their own officers, the meek-spirited Mexican 
Indian conscripts were killed or stampeded 
almost as easily as a flock of sheep. How 
many hundred of them were killed and 
wounded it is impossible to say, but less 

so 



"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" 

than 50 out of the whole 1,200 escaped 
captivity or death. Vince's Bridge, the 
only means of crossing the swamp in Santa 
Anna's rear, had been destroyed just be- 
fore the assault by *'Deaf Smith," a scout 
famous ever after in Texan song and story. 
Only 2 of Houston's men were killed and 
23 wounded, including the general himself, 
who had been shot in the foot. 

President Santa Anna and General Cos 
were both captured. Few could have 
blamed the Texans if both these worthies 
had been shot or hanged to the nearest tree, 
but the humanity of the Texans and the 
firmness of Houston spared their lives. 
Santa Anna hastened to sign a treaty 
recognizing the independence of Texas. 
Though the Mexican Government repudi- 
ated this treaty and behaved exactly like 
the Government of Spain after the Treaty of 
Cordova had been signed by O'Donoju and 
Iturbide, the independence of Texas was 
nevertheless an accomplished fact. At the 
news of Santa Anna's defeat, the other 
Mexican commanders in Texas retreated 
across the Rio Grande. Despite Mexico's 
angry protests that Texas was merely a re- 

51 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

bellious province to be presently subdued, 
the other nations of the earth, following the 
leadership of the United States, soon rec- 
ognized the independence of the Republic 
of Texas. 



52 



CHAPTER V 
MEDIATION AND ANNEXATION 

MEDIATION between Mexico and the 
Republic of Texas, through the good 
offices of the British and French ministers 
at Mexico City, was proposed by President 
Houston in the summer of 1843. During 
the seven years since San Jacinto, an ir- 
ritating and inconclusive border warfare 
had been carried on by both sides. Towns 
had been raided and cattle driven off on 
either side of the border; Mexicans had cap- 
tured the district judge, members of the 
bar and other prominent citizens of San 
Antonio, and for the last three years the 
Texan navy of four small schooners had 
been subsidized by the revolutionary party 
in Yucatan and cruised successfully off the 
Gulf coast of Mexico. 

More ambitious but less successful was 
the attempt made to conquer New Mexico 
— as all the huge and indefinite region 
between Texas and California was then 

53 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

called — with a force of less than 300 
Texans in 1841. Worn out and scattered 
after their desert march, these men sur- 
rendered to the New Mexican authorities 
without firing a shot, were imprisoned in 
Santa Fe and then taken to Mexico City, 
where they were eventually released, after 
having suffered great hardships and count- 
less indignities. In the United States public 
sympathy for the ^'prisoners of Santa Fe" 
was both warm and outspoken, and it was 
quite impossible for the Federal Govern- 
ment, with its limited powers, to keep armed 
American filibusters from going to help the 
Texans either as individuals or in semi- 
organized companies disguised as ^'im- 
migrants." A violent attack on the United 
States Government for tolerating, if not 
conniving at, these breaches of neutrality 
was published by the Mexican Minister of 
Foreign Affairs in a Mexico City news- 
paper and led to strange results. 

A stray copy of this paper fell into the 
hands of Commodore Ap Catesby Jones, a 
gallant but somewhat impulsive officer of 
Welsh descent, then commanding the Pa- 
cific squadron of the United States navy, 

54 



MEDIATION AND ANNEXATION 

and convinced him that war must have 
broken out between the United States and 
Mexico. By the same mail — the first that 
had reached him for many months — ^Jones 
also received a Boston paper which declared 
that Mexico was about to cede California 
to Great Britain. These things, together 
with the accidental departure of the British 
fleet that had been lying with his own in the 
harbor of Callao, on the west coast of South 
America, were enough for Jones. Setting 
sail at once, he reached the harbor of 
Monterey, demanded and received the 
surrender of the astonished town, scared 
the 29 soldiers out of the fort and the 
governor into the interior — all on Wednes- 
day, October 19, 1842. On Thursday the 
commodore landed his marines, hoisted the 
stars and stripes, annexed both Upper and 
Lower California, and delivered to the in- 
habitants an impressive proclamation that 
he had composed on his way up the coast. 
On Friday an American who kept a general 
store in Monterey came on board the flag- 
ship with a newspaper of later date. Dis- 
covering from this and the evidence of his 
own senses that there was no war and 

55 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

no English annexation, Commodore Jones 
realized his error, hauled down his flag im- 
mediately, apologized like a gentleman, and 
sailed away. 

The belief that England was planning 
to extend her empire and curtail the future 
growth of the United States, by annexing 
not only California but also "the Oregon 
country" and Texas, was almost universal 
among the American people at this time. 
It was 'less than thirty years since the War 
of 1812, the land operations of which had 
consisted mainly of a series of disastrous 
attempts on our part to invade Canada, 
and the danger of the creation of a second 
Canada to the south of us had been darkly 
portrayed by the aged Andrew Jackson, 
hero of the last war with Great Britain. 
The success of the mediators in obtaining 
a truce preliminary to negotiations for peace 
between Texas and Mexico, taken in con- 
junction with the well-known English zeal 
for the abolition of slavery, greatly alarmed 
the administration at Washington. In 
reply to a communication from Mr. Up- 
shur, President Tyler's Secretary of State, 
Lord Aberdeen, the British premier, de- 
56 



MEDIATION AND ANNEXATION 

dared that Great Britain while "constantly 
exerting herself to procure the general 
abolition of slavery throughout the world" 
was entertaining no "occult designs" in re- 
gard to either Mexico or Texas. 

Forty-eight hours after this despatch was 
sent Upshur was killed, together with a 
number of other people, by the explosion 
of the great wrought-iron pivot gun " Peace- 
maker" on board the new cruiser Princeton^ 
and John C. Calhoun became Secretary of 
State. 

Both President Tyler and the new head 
of his Cabinet were Southerners and slave 
owners, who judged slavery from the mild 
paternalism of their own plantations and 
neighborhoods and regarded the abolition- 
ists as misguided fanatics bent on the dis- 
ruption of the Union. Both men were 
singularly free from the fear of political 
consequences or the ties of party allegiance. 
Elected Vice-President by the Whigs, to the 
slogan of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" in 
the roaring log-cabin-and-hard-cider cam- 
paign of 1840, Tyler had soon succeeded to 
the presidency on the death of his aged and 
infirm chief, General Harrison, and pres- 

57 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

ently broke entirely with the party that 
had elected him. Calhoun, on his part, 
cared little for elective office but acted en- 
tirely on his own personal convictions, 
chief among which was a sincere belief in 
the righteousness of negro slavery. Ac- 
cident or fate had placed in power the two 
men best fitted to reopen the vexed question 
of the annexation of Texas and set it 
squarely before the American people. 

President Andrew Jackson had favored 
the annexation as well as the recognition 
of Texas, but his Congress had voted it 
down. Neither did it appeal, though re- 
peatedly sought by the Texans themselves, 
to the Van Buren administration, which 
sought to maintain neutrality with Mexico 
and avoid stirring up unseemly contro- 
versies with the unpopular but rapidly 
growing faction of abolitionists by advocat- 
ing what must be an extension of slave ter- 
ritory. Yet it became increasingly clear 
that the matter could not be put off indef- 
initely, for the 50,000 or 60,000 Texans 
with an empty treasury could not long 
defend an empty empire against 8,000,000 
Mexicans if ever the latter stopped their 
58 



MEDIATION AND ANNEXATION 

Internal wars and turned their full strength 
to the subjugation of their ''rebellious 
province." To guarantee peace with Mex- 
ico, Texas had either to enter the Union, as 
nine out of ten Texans desired, or, in the 
last extremity, seek the protection of some 
strong European power. 

Within six weeks after he had become 
Secretary of State, Calhoun had negotiated 
and signed a treaty of annexation with 
Texas. But before it could be ratified by 
the United States Senate the two great 
political parties had held their national 
conventions for the approaching presiden- 
tial campaign. Henry Clay, the Whig 
candidate, had shown himself indifferent, if 
not hostile to annexation, and as the Whig 
Senators were in the majority the treaty 
was lost. 

The Democratic National Convention of 
1844 was one of the most exciting and in- 
teresting in our political history.* It was 
the first to have its proceedings reported by 
telegraph, and the first in which there Vv^as 
either a ''stampede" or the nomination of 

* See Joseph Bucklin Bishop's "Presidential Nominations and 
Elections." 

59 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

a "dark horse." Though their candidate 
was so little known in comparison to his il- 
lustrious opponent as to arouse the derisive 
cry of "Who is James K. Polk ?" his plat- 
form appealed strongly to the popular spirit 
of the time by declaring boldly that "the 
reoccupation of Oregon and the reannexa- 
tion of Texas are great American mea- 
sures." 

The Whigs, on the other hand, depended 
less on their platform — an uninspiring re- 
cital of minor issues — than on the character 
of their great but politically unfortunate 
candidate. If Clay had followed the shrewd 
advice of his managers and kept silence on 
the Texas question, beyond opposing im- 
mediate annexation, he would, in all prob- 
ability, have been elected. But he had a 
fatal weakness for writing private letters 
on public ajffairs, and two of these letters, 
made public by his correspondents, cost 
him the presidency. In one. Clay depre- 
cated the admission of Texas, because it 
would be "opposed to the wishes of a con- 
siderable and respectable portion of the 
Confederacy," which statement was inter- 
preted as favoring the abolitionists and told 

60 



MEDIATION AND ANNEXATION 

heavily against him in the South. In the 
second letter, Clay declared that he did 
not "think that the subject of slavery ought 
to affect the question one way or another/' 
This turned against him the votes of the 
abolitionist or "Liberty Party," which held 
the balance of power in the closely contested 
and pivotal States of New York and Michi- 
gan. Those few thousand votes cost Henry 
Clay the thirty-six presidental electors from 
New York and made James K. Polk Presi- 
dent of the United States. 

President Tyler, who had come out for 
re-election on an independent ticket, with 
"Tyler and Texas" for his platform, soon 
went over to the Democrats and withdrew 
in favor of Polk. Encouraged by the result 
of the November elections, which had 
strengthened the Democratic majority in 
the House and created one in the Senate, 
Tyler urged the admission of Texas as a 
State by a joint resolution of Congress. 

It was inevitable that the new member 
of the Union, both from its geographical 
position and the desire of its own people, 
should be a slave State. Ex-President 
John Quincy Adams, the leader of the anti- 

6i 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

slavery forces, had, curiously enough, been 
the first to advocate the annexation of 
Texas in 1824, and he now found some diffi- 
culty in explaining this apparent inconsis- 
tency. His real reasons for opposing the 
annexation of Texas were a genuine hatred 
of slavery and an equally genuine hatred 
of Andrew Jackson and all his works. The 
reasons he now advanced were, first, that 
Texas was still an integral part of Mexico, 
and, second, that the treaty-making power 
of the United States Government, while 
enabling it to annex uninhabited tracts of 
land, did not authorize bringing alien popu- 
lations into the Union. Mr. Adams's first 
objection, however, was hardly in accor- 
dance with the established facts, and his 
second, though more worthy of considera- 
tion, was paid little heed to at the time. 
The best that the opponents of slavery 
could do was to limit its existence in the 
new territory to below the line of the Mis- 
souri Compromise, thus fixing the northern 
boundary of Texas at 36° 30' north lati- 
tude. 

The joint resolution, amended so as to 
give the President the option of reopening 
62 



MEDIATION AND ANNEXATION 

negotiations for the annexation of Texas, 
instead of directly admitting it as a State, 
passed Congress and was promptly signed 
by President Tyler on March i, 1845. In- 
stead of negotiating or waiting for his suc- 
cessor to act, Tyler immediately submitted 
the offer to Texas. 

Mediation between Texas and Mexico 
had so far progressed that the preliminaries 
of a treaty were actually signed on March 
19 and May 29. Mexico, yielding to the 
urgent warning of the French and English 
mediators, was ready to acknowledge the 
independence of Texas, if the latter would 
pledge herself never to suffer annexation by 
the United States. But these concessions 
had been made too late. 

With scarcely a dissenting vote, the Texas 
Congress, on June 16, a Texan national 
convention on the 4th of July, and the 
people themselves at a special election held 
the following October, chose to accept the 
offer of the United States. President Polk 
signed the final resolution of Congress, ad- 
mitting the State of Texas on December 19, 
1845. 

More than nine months before, between 
63 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Tyler's offer to Texas and Polk's inaugura- 
tion, Senor Almonte, the Mexican minister, 
had demanded his passports and left the 
United States, protesting against the threat- 
ened disintegration of his country and 
breathing dire threats of war. 



64 



CHAPTER VI 
CAUSES OF THE WAR 

WHAT were the causes of our first war 
with Mexico ? 
To the abohtionists of the period the 
answer was simply: Slavery. Their ver- 
sion of Texan history was well summed up 
in a pamphlet published over the signature 
of John Quincy Adams and twelve other 
members of Congress in March, 1843. It 
declared that the settlement of American 
citizens in Texas, the creations of differences 
with the Mexican Government, the setting 
up of an independent republic, and the 
frustration of Mexico's attempts to sub- 
due *'her revolted province," had all been 
brought about by the machinations of the 
American slave owners, through the Federal 
Government they controlled. The purpose 
of this deep-laid plot was to bring about the 
annexation of Texas and the creation from 
its territories of three or four new slave 
States. This, Mr. Adams declared, would 

65 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

"eternize slavery/' cause war with Mex- 
ico, and justify the withdrawal of the free 
States from the Union.* 

This pubhcation had Httle effect in the 
United States at the time, but it created a 
great impression in Mexico by its confirma- 
tion of Alaman's theory of an "American 
conspiracy/' Like his fellow scholar and 
statesman, Alaman, Adams was actuated 
by high and patriotic motives, but uncon- 
sciously distorted the facts to fit his own 
fervid convictions. As a campaign docu- 
ment, illustrating his party's point of view, 
Mr. Adams's pamphlet has great historical 
value, but to regard it as an impartial 
chronicle of past events is ludicrous. Yet 
from the triumph of the abolition cause in 
the Civil War until very recently most ac- 

* These charges were based partly upon the observations of 
Benjamin Lundy, an abolitionist who travelled through Texas 
in 1835, and partly upon the indiscreet action of General Gaines, 
commanding the United States forces on the Texas border in 
1836. Importuned by refugees fleeing before the advance of 
Santa Anna, Gaines wilfully mistook the Mexicans for "In- 
dians," and sent nine companies of United States infantry into 
Texas as far as Nacogdoches. Though this was an outrageous 
affront to Mexico that was never properly apologized for by the 
United States, it was undertaken solely on General Gaines's own 
initiative and had no effect on the outcome of the San Jacinto 
campaign. But, like Jones's exploit at Monterey, it lent color 
to the "conspiracy theory." 

66 



CAUSES OF THE WAR 

counts of our first war in Mexico have been 
based, consciously or unconsciously, rather 
upon these excited assertions, made in the 
heat of a bitter fight, than upon a careful 
review of the facts. But now that that 
fight has been won and slavery has been 
dead for half a century and more, there is 
no longer any reason either to fear that any 
sane man will come forward in defense of 
that ancient evil, or for us to continue to 
charge the slave owners with a needless, 
unproved conspiracy to gain an unprofit- 
able end. 

No "conspiracy" was needed to create 
the republic of Texas. If there had not 
been a single negro slave in all North Amer- 
ica some Moses Austin would nevertheless 
have led American settlers into Texas, 
where they would sooner or later have 
quarrelled with the Mexicans over home 
rule, the tariff, and religious freedom, won 
their independence and sought admission 
into the Union. But because negro slavery 
did exist both in Texas and the Southern 
States of the Union, the entrance of Texas 
was vehemently sought by slavery's friends 
and fought by slavery's foes, till another 
67 . 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

element brought aid and victory to the 
former. 

Analysis of Polk's support at the polls 
shows us what this element was. While 
he carried eight slave States to Clay's five, 
Polk also received the electoral vote of 
seven free States to his opponent's six, 
including two in New England and, what is 
particularly significant, the entire north- 
west. 

Not only slavery but Oregon helped bring 
Texas into the Union. For a quarter of a 
century there had been a conscious pairing- 
off of new States, slave and free, on either 
side of the line established by the Missouri 
Compromise. The danger to this jealously 
preserved balance of power that many be- 
sides the abolitionists saw in the admission 
of Texas, out of which three or four new 
slave States might be made, was now met 
and counterbalanced by the proposed ad- 
mission of an even greater expanse of free 
territory to the north. The time had not 
yet come when the American people were 
to realize the great truth that Abraham Lin- 
coln was presently to declare: "A house 
divided against itself cannot stand. . . . 
68 



CAUSES OF THE WAR 

The Union cannot endure half slave and 
half free/' To the men of Polk's genera- 
tion his coupling of the ''reoccupation of 
Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas " in 
his platform seemed not only shrewd poli- 
tics but sound statesmanship. His policy 
accorded with both the compromising and 
the adventurous spirits of the age. The 
current of expansion to the northwest 
joined with the current of expansion to the 
southwest and together swept away all op- 
position. 

But after Texas was safely in the Union 
slavery had little or nothing more to gain 
by a war with Mexico, nor had it any need 
to force that conflict. In the words of Pro- 
fessor Garrison, of the University of Texas : 

^*No theory of a conspiracy is needed to 
explain the war with Mexico. While it 
was strongly opposed and condemned by a 
bold and outspoken minority, the votes in 
Congress and the utterances of the con- 
temporaneous journals show that it was 
essentially a popular movement, both in 
Mexico and in the United States. The dis- 
agreement reached the verge of an out- 
break in 1837, and the only thing that pre- 

69 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

vented a conflict then was that Congress 
was a bit more conservative than the Presi- 
dent. But neither the aggressiveness of 
Jackson nor even that of Polk would have 
been so likely to end in actual fighting, had 
it not been well understood that they were 
backed by sympathetic majorities."* 

If there was no conspiracy, what, then, 
brought about the war ? 

The primary but not the sole cause was 
our annexation of Texas and Mexico's re- 
sentment of that action. In the second 
place were the unpaid claims, amounting 
to more than ^5,000,000, of American citi- 
zens against the Mexican Government for 
property seized or destroyed during past 
revolutions. In the third place was the 
desire of the United States to annex Cali- 
fornia. 

President Polk considered these three 
things and evolved a plan. Though diplo- 
matic relations had been broken off before 
his inauguration, he endeavored to reach a 
peaceful settlement and persuaded the Mex- 
ican Government to receive an American 
minister. This envoy, Mr. John Slidell, 

* Hart's "American Nation," vol. XVII, p. 202. 
70 



CAUSES OF THE WAR 

was instructed to obtain Mexico's recogni- 
tion of our right to annex Texas by offering 
her indirect compensation, in the form of 
an extra large price for the purchase of 
Cahfornia and as much of New Mexico as 
could be obtained for not more than ^25,- 
000,000. This purchase price was to in- 
clude the assumption by the United States 
Government of the otherwise uncollectible 
claims of American citizens against Mexico. 
This proposition seemed perfectly reason- 
able and generous to Polk, who laid much 
stress on the precedent of Spain's cession 
of Florida in 18 19 in return for the as- 
sumption by the United States of ^5,000,000 
worth of bad debts to American citizens 
from the Spanish crown. Mexico's hold on 
her distant province of California in 1846 
was almost as feeble as Spain's on Florida 
in 1 8 19, and her financial condition was 
fully as bad. 

From the War of Independence till the 
present day Mexico's unpaid debts have 
been a fruitful source of shame and suffering 
to that country. Except during the dic- 
tatorship of Porfirio Diaz the government 
has changed hands so rapidly, the treasury 

71 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

has been so empty, and the people, par- 
ticularly those of the capital, so prone to 
regard the payment of foreign debts as an 
unpatriotic surrender, that few of Mexico's 
creditors have been paid in full. 

One effective bit of debt collecting was 
the bombardment and seizure of Vera 
Cruz by a French fleet in 1838, which also 
caused the restoration in popular favor of 
General Santa Anna. Intrusted with the 
defense of Vera Cruz after its capture, he 
prudently waited till the French sailors and 
marines were re-embarking, when the Mex- 
icans exchanged a few shots with them re- 
sulting in the "'repulse" of the French and 
the loss of Santa Anna's left leg. The 
'"Hero of Tampico" was now hailed as the 
"Hero of Vera Cruz," and within three 
years he was able to make himself once more 
President of Mexico. 

How Santa Anna ruled and robbed his 
country in shabby pomp, how he had six 
colonels in full-dress uniform stand behind 
his chair at dinner, how he gave his own 
left leg a magnificent military funeral, how 
the people rose in exasperation, drove Santa 
Anna into exile, dug up his left leg and 

72 



CAUSES OF THE WAR 

dragged it disrespectfully through the streets 
of Mexico City, can be best read in the de- 
lightful memoirs of Madame Calderon, the 
American wife of the Spanish minister to 
Mexico at that interesting period. 

President Herrera, who succeeded Santa 
Anna, was not the leader of a mere clique 
of successful mutineers, but had been placed 
in power by something approaching a gen- 
uine popular movement. Yet because his 
government consented to receive Mr. Sli- 
dell and discuss, however reluctantly, the 
recognition of the annexation of Texas, the 
settlement of the American claims, and the 
cession of California, Herrera was promptly 
driven o-ut of office by a revolution under 
the leadership of General Paredes, com- 
manding the Army of the North. The 
American envoy took ship at Vera Cruz, 
and President Paredes loudly declared that 
the time had come "to appeal to the honor 
of Mexican arms." 

James K. Polk has been severely criticised 
for his aggressive attitude toward Mexico at 
this point, but his critics usually omit to say 
anything of General Mariano Paredes y 
Arillaga. No one would attempt to write a 

1^ 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

history of President Wilson's relations with 
Mexico and leave out all mention of Generals 
Victoriano Huerta and Venustiano Car- 
ranza, yet Paredes was fully as reactionary 
as the former and as impossible to reason 
with as the latter. As Mr. Rives points out, 
he was a vainglorious incompetent, who be- 
lieved in the invincibility of Mexican arms 
and the restoration of monarchical rule. 
Like Santa Anna, whom he had recalled to 
power with a mutiny in 1841 and driven 
out with another one in 1844, Paredes had 
been an officer in the Spanish army till the 
declaration of independence by Iturbide.* 
To deal with a Mexican ruler of this kind 
would have exhausted the patience of a 
far more diplomatic President than stub- 
born, narrow-minded James K. Polk. With 
two such men placed respectively in the 
White House and the Palacio Nacional at 
such a time war was inevitable. 

It was at this point that Santa Anna, 
from his exile in Cuba, sent a confidential 
agent to Washington with the suggestion 
that if he were helped by Polk to return to 
Mexico, Santa Anna would then drive out 

* " Rives," vol. I, p. 27. 

74 



CAUSES OF THE WAR 

Parades, make himself President, and ne- 
gotiate the desired treaty with the United 
States. Though Santa Anna afterward 
denied ever making such an offer, there is 
abundant evidence, including Polk's own 
diary, that it was not only made but ac- 
cepted. But before it could be carried into 
effect hostilities had already begun. 

The immediate cause of the war was the 
advance of the United States forces in 
Texas, which had been encamped at Corpus 
Christi, near the mouth of the Nueces 
River, to the east bank of the Rio Grande. 

Though the Mexicans had continually 
maintained that all Texas was still a part 
of their country, they had made no pro- 
test about its occupation by United States 
troops until Taylor crossed the Nueces. 
By this action, they declared, he had left 
Texas and invaded the Department of 
Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, in Mexico, 

The western boundary of Texas, both as 
a Spanish and a Mexican province, had un- 
doubtedly been the Nueces River. The 
claim of the Texans that their republic ex- 
tended to the Rio Grande rested, first, on a 
secret treaty to that effect, signed by Santa 
75 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Anna immediately after the battle of San 
Jacinto, but promptly declared void by the 
Mexican Government; and, second, on con- 
quest and the retreat of the Mexican armies 
to the west bank of the Rio Grande. The 
country between the two rivers was claimed 
by both sides, but effectively occupied by 
neither. It was in reality a No Man's Land, 
settled here and there by squatters and riff- 
raff from both nations. 

The Texan title by conquest was at least 
a debatable one, but Polk rested his claim 
squarely upon the old disproved fable of a 
French title to Texas derived from La 
Salle's settlement, acquired by the United 
States with the Louisiana Purchase, and 
surrendered to Spain by the Florida Treaty 
(see pages 8 and 9). On a revival of this 
non-existent and solemnly renounced right, 
Polk based the plank in his platform urging 
"the reannexation of Texas," as is shown by 
his subsequent assertion that "the Texas 
which was ceded to Spain by the Florida 
Treaty of 18 19 embraced all the country 
now claimed by the State of Texas between 
the Nueces and the Rio Grande."* 

* Message to Congress, December, 1846. 

76 



CAUSES OF THE WAR 
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity 
of Polk's beUef in this notorious fable of 
American history. Very many others in- 
cluding Henry Clay, Polk's recent rival for 
the presidency, had, at one time or another, 
entertained this belief. The total influence 
of this historical error in bringing about our 
first war with Mexico is incalculable. 

Did Polk, by ordering Taylor to ad- 
vance to the Rio Grande, deliberately plan 
to provoke a war in the interest of slavery ? 
What Polk and the South could have ex- 
pected to gain by so doing is not easy to 
prove. The South had already gained its 
great object in the annexation of Texas, 
and had no corresponding interest in Cali- 
fornia. Polk ardently desired California, 
but still hoped to obtain it peacefully. 
And he was not unaware that his election 
had been due to Northern as well as South- 
ern votes and that an expensive and un- 
popular war might well cost the Democratic 
party its majority in Congress, as in tact 
it did at the congressional elections in the 

following autumn. rj. , , a 

Polk's motive in ordering Taylor s ad- 
vance seems to have been twofold. By 

77 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

thus taking possession of the disputed ter- 
ritory he expected, first, to put the United 
States in a stronger position to negotiate 
for that territory, and, second, to give the 
United States army a good base from which 
to operate should negotiations fail and war 
ensue. By exactly such an aggressive policy 
Polk was even then carrying to a trium- 
phant conclusion the negotiations with 
Great Britain, which began with an Amer- 
ican migration into Oregon to the cry of 
"Fifty-four Forty or Fight,'' and ended, 
because neither side wanted to fight but 
was ready to do so if necessary, in a peace- 
ful and honorable compromise at the forty- 
ninth parallel. Because these strong, blunt 
methods had succeeded with England, Polk 
thought that would be equally effective 
with Mexico. 

Because Spain had prudently preferred 
giving up Florida in payment of five million 
dollars' worth of American claims to losing 
it in a disastrous war with the United States 
in 1 8 19, Polk saw no reason why Mexico 
should not follow the same course with 
California in 1846, especially as the United 
States was offering a substantial cash bonus, 

78 



CAUSES OF THE WAR 

over and above the assumption of debts. 
He overlooked the fact that while the Span- 
ish people in 1819 did not care a maravedi 
about Florida, the Mexican people in 1846 
were ready to make short work of any Mex- 
ican executive that "surrendered" Texas 
and California to the hated Americans of 
the North. 

In the last analysis, Polk's great error 
lay in overestimating the yielding and un- 
derestimating the explosive elements of the 
Mexican character. We can understand 
this the more readily when we consider how 
seventy years later another President of 
the United States, infinitely less aggressive 
and more intelligent than James K. Polk, 
almost failed for the same reasons to pre- 
vent American intervention and our second 
war in Mexico. 



79 



CHAPTER VII 
PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

THE advance-guard of General Tay- 
lor's army, part of which had marched 
overland from Corpus Christi and the rest 
had been transported by sea to the new base 
at Point Isabel, reached the east bank of 
the Rio Grande, opposite the Mexican town 
of Matamoros, on March 28, 1846. Great 
excitement and resentment were displayed 
by the Mexicans, who immediately threw 
up batteries on their side of the river. 
Taylor therefore had his engineers con- 
struct a large quadrangular earthwork or 
"strong bastioned field-fort." From the 
name of its commander this was presently 
named Fort Brown, and became the nucleus 
of the present city of Brownsville. 

General Ampudia, commanding the Mex- 
ican Army of the North that had been 
assembled at Matamoros, sent Taylor an 
ultimatum on April 12 ordering him to with- 
80 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

draw within twenty-four hours toward the 
far bank of the Nueces. Instead of com- 
plying, Taylor arranged with the naval 
escort that had accompanied his transports 
to Point Isabel, for a blockade of the mouth 
of the Rio Grande. This warlike act cut 
off the Mexican army from its main source 
of supplies, and was the last straw that 
broke the back of Mexico's patience. 

President Paredes issued a proclamation 
on the 23d of April, declaring that: 

"... Hostilities therefore have been 
begun by the United States of America, who 
have undertaken new conquests lying within 
the line of the Department of Tamaulipas 
and Nuevo Leon, while the troops of the 
United States are threatening Monterey in 
Upper California. . . .* From this day 
defensive war begins, and every point of 
our territory which may be invaded or at- 
tacked shall be defended with force." 

General Arista, who had supplanted 
Ampudia in command, led the Mexican 
army across the Rio Grande on the 24th. 
Captain Thornton's troop of the Second 
United States Dragoons, on scouting duty, 

* See page 98. 



;i 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

were surprised and captured by an over- 
whelming force of Mexicans on the follow- 
ing day. Thornton alone escaped by leap- 
ing his horse over a hedge, and carried the 
news to General Taylor, who immediately 
notified Washington of the outbreak of 
hostilities and, as he had been previously 
authorized to do in such an emergency, 
called on the governors of Texas and 
Louisiana for eight regiments of volun- 
teers. 

Fearing that the Mexicans would try to 
cut him off from his base, Taylor retreated 
on May i with the main body of his army 
to Point Isabel. Two companies of artillery 
and the Seventh Infantry were left under 
Major Brown to hold the fort opposite 
Matamoros. Arista's army invested the 
fort and bombarded it for several days, both 
from the Matamoros batteries and with 
guns planted in the rear of the work. Little 
damage was done to the fort and only two 
of the garrison were killed, but one of these 
was Major Brown. 

Hearing the cannonade and having ob- 
tained a strong guard of sailors and marines 
from the fleet to hold Point Isabel, Taylor 

82 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

turned back on May 6. Arista had marched 
to meet him, and on the 8th the two 
armies met on the open prairie at Palo 
Alto, or "Tall Timber." 

Deducting the thousand or so left in ob- 
servation outside Fort Brown, Arista had 
approximately 4,000 men with which to 
face Taylor's 2,300. The bulk of the Mex- 
ican force consisted of four large battalions 
of regular infantry — patient, plodding con- 
scripts who had been released from jail or 
kidnapped from civil life into the ragged 
ranks of the standing army. Half-trained, 
ill-disciplined, and seldom paid, these troops 
were nevertheless celebrated for their abil- 
ity to make long marches, and, until their 
spirit had been broken by continuous de- 
feats, were not afraid to face the Americans 
in the open field. 

As for the rank and file of Taylor's army, 
a typical company of United States regu- 
lars at this time '"consisted of 60 men, in- 
cluding non-commissioned officers and pri- 
vates; of these 2 were English, 4 Scotch, 7 
Germans, 16 Americans, and the remainder 
Irish."* Their high-collared, bobtailed 

*Ballentine, "An English Soldier in Mexico," p. 91. 

83 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

jackets were rendered still more uncom- 
fortable by barbarous old-fashioned leather 
stocks; otherwise the dark-blue uniforms 
were plain and serviceable, if rather hot for 
a semitropical climate. The soft-topped, 
bell-crowned American forage-caps of 1846 
were shaped very much like those worn by 
the British officers in Flanders in 1916. 
Unlike Flanders there was not a single 
trench dug or fought in from beginning to 
end of our first war in Mexico except at the 
siege of Vera Cruz. 

There was little need to dig shelters from 
the infantry fire when both sides were 
armed with smooth-bore, muzzle-loading 
flintlock muskets. Percussion-lock rifles, 
though well known and widely used by 
civilian sportsmen, were still distrusted by 
the conservative military mind. There was 
a great difference, however, between the 
American and Mexican flintlocks. The 
former, made at the Springfield arsenal, 
were the best in the world, the latter *'were 
all of British manufacture and had the 
Tower mark on their locks; but they were 
old and worn out, having evidently been 
condemned as unserviceable in the British 

84 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALM A 

army and then sold to the Mexicans at a 
low price."* 

As for the cavalry of the two armies, the 
American dragoons were much inferior in 
numbers to the Mexican lancers and equally 
superior in every other respect. Though 
northern Mexico is a country of born 
horsemen and as admirably adapted for 
mounted infantry tactics as was South 
Africa in 1900, the Mexican trooper of 1846 
was neither a mounted sharpshooter like 
the Boer nor an old-fashioned cavalryman 
who could charge home with the cold steel. 
His clumsy escopeta, or carbine, made him 
of little use when dismounted, and his gayly 
pennoned lance was more often thrust 
through the bodies of American wounded 
than crossed with the bayonets of even 
broken and disordered American infantry. 
But the two regiments of United States 
dragoons were the crack corps of the Amer- 
ican army. Gallantly led, well armed with 
carbine, sabre, and pistol, and mounted on 
chargers that dwarfed the undersized Mex- 
ican ponies, Twiggs's and Kearny's dra- 
goons were ready and eager to uphold the 

* Ballentine, p. 199. 

8s 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

traditions of Light-Horse Harry Lee and 
Mad Anthony Wayne.* 

At Palo Aho, Arista had twelve pieces of 
artillery, Taylor two light field-batteries of 
four guns each and two eighteen-pounders 
drawn by oxen. The Mexican cannon were 
beautifully cast in bronze, many of them 
bearing the crown and arms of Spain, with 
dates and inscriptions like "Barcelona, 
1774," or ''Cadiz, 1767." Mounted on 
clumsy wooden carriages, these ponder- 
ous relics were incapable of being quickly 
limbered up and moved from one part of 
the battle-field to another, but were rather 
regarded as fixtures once the Mexicans had 
succeeded in bringing up and ''placing their 
cumbersome artillery in position, which was 
ill proportioned to the poor little mules that 
had to draw it."t The United States field 
artillery, on the other hand, had been 
brought to a high state of efficiency. (The 
ox-drawn battery, mentioned above, was 
an exceptional makeshift.) Its light, mod- 

* The American people are still spoken of among certain of our 
Indian tribes as the "Long Knives," a name derived from the 
sabres of Wayne's dragoons at the battle of the Fallen Timbers 
in 1794. 

t Davis, "Jefferson Davis," I, 340. 

86 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

ern six-pounders, each drawn by two pairs 
of horses, dashed up and swung into bat- 
tery in a way to make the Americans boast 
of ''the Flying Artillery," and the Mexi- 
cans marvelled to behold "the Northern 
horses thunder with the cannon at their 
heels." 

But the greatest difference between the 
two armies was in the officers. Most of 
the Spanish veterans in the Mexican service 
were now superannuated. On the other 
hand, the National Military Academy at 
Chapultepec had not been founded till 
1833, and its work had been much impeded 
and interrupted by chronic poverty and 
frequent revolutions. Both its few trained 
graduates and the untrained political ap- 
pointees from civil life who made up the 
great mass of officers had seen more or less 
active service in the endless fighting be- 
tween the constantly shifting military fac- 
tions, where each learned to mistrust his 
comrade as a possible future foe. 

As for the American officers, to quote one 
of them who was at that time a young 
second lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry: 

"Every officer, from the highest to the 
87 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

lowest, was educated in his profession — 
not at West Point necessarily, but in the 
camp, in garrison, and many of them in 
Indian wars. ... A better army, man for 
man, probably never faced an enemy than 
the one commanded by General Taylor in 
the earliest two engagements of the Mex- 
ican War."* 

Zachary Taylor, who at this time, at the 
age of sixty-one, was only a colonel in 
actual rank but had been brevetted a brig- 
adier-general by Polk, was a native of 
northern Virginia, whose parents had taken 
him with them to Kentucky when he was 
ten years old. Entering the army in the 
War of 1812, Taylor had distinguished him- 
self by his defense of Fort Harrison against 
the Indians, and he had served in the Black 
Hawk and the Seminole Wars. His ap- 
pearance was anything but military, for he 
almost never wore a uniform and was fond 
of riding with both his legs hanging over 
the same side of the horse. But he was a 
hard fighter and a born handler of men. 
His soldiers affectionately nicknamed him 
"'Old Rough and Ready," and declared, 

* "Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant," I, 130. 
88 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

in the words of a popular ballad of the 
period:* 

"Though our General at best was indifferently 
dressed, 
In a dingy green frock coat and in pants of cot- 

tonade, 
And a broken old straw hat, still we did not care 
for that. . . ." 

The battle of Palo Alto was an artillery 
duel, the infantry on either side being 
drawn up in solid ranks, just out of musket 
range. Not only had Taylor fewer men in 
line than his opponent, but he was also 
obliged to detach a strong body of infantry 
and a squadron of dragoons to protect the 
supply-train of three hundred wagons 
parked in the American rear. But his two 
eighteen-pounders in the centre and the 
light battery on either flank made terrible 
havoc in the close-packed Mexican ranks 
with accurate shell fire, while the copper 
cannon-balls from the Mexican guns flew 
so slowly through the air that the Amer- 
icans usually saw them coming in time to 
open ranks and let the solid shot pass 

*M'Carty's "National Songs, 1846." 

89 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

harmlessly by. After his men had suffered 
helplessly at long range for an hour, while 
they implored him either to advance or 
retreat, Arista made a half-hearted and 
quickly checked forward movement against 
the American right flank. The long prairie 
grass was set on fire by burning wadding, 
and under cover of the smoke Arista at- 
tempted to turn Taylor's left, at the same 
time sending a body of lancers to renew the 
attack on the right. There the Fifth United 
States Infantry expectantly formed a hol- 
low square, in the centre of which was 
Taylor himself, but the Mexican cavalry 
did not press their charge, and their in- 
fantry were soon driven back by artillery 
fire. Thereafter both sides remained in- 
active till nightfall, when Arista made good 
his retreat under cover of darkness. His 
official report placed the total Mexican loss 
in killed and wounded at 252, which was 
probably an underestimate. The American 
loss was 9 killed, including the senior artil- 
lery officer. Major Ringgold; 44 wounded, 
and 2 missing. 

Falling back to within three miles of 
Fort Brown, Arista's army took up a strong 
90 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

position at Resaca de la Palma. This 
*'Palm-Tree Ravine'' was one of a chain of 
depressions and lakes that marked the 
course of an abandoned bed of the Rio 
Grande. Steep-banked and dry-bottomed, 
it was shaped like a crescent with the points 
toward the Americans, and lay directly 
athwart the Point Isabel road, down which 
they must advance. On either side of this 
road the ground was covered with so dense 
a growth of sharp-thorned chaparral as to 
be impassable to either cavalry or artillery. 
Behind this natural "barbed-wire entan- 
glement" the Mexican infantry lined the 
near bank of the ravine, exposing only their 
heads and shoulders. Most of Arista's 
regulars were on the right of his concave 
line, the left being held by one regular bat- 
talion, the Tampico veterans, and the vari- 
ous irregular and local troops, supported 
by two field-pieces. Three other Mexican 
guns were planted in the centre to sweep 
the road. Behind their infantry supports 
were the remaining guns and the cavalry 
in reserve, while only two hundred yards 
back of the firing-line lay the Mexican 
camp. 

91 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

A council of war, summoned by General 
Taylor after the fight at Palo Alto, voted 
against an advance, but "Old Rough and 
Ready" overrode this advice. Leaving the 
wounded and the wagon-train with a strong 
guard of infantry inside a hastily thrown-up 
earthwork armed with the two eighteen- 
pounders and a couple of twelve-pounders 
that had been carried unmounted in the 
train, he led the rest of his little army in 
pursuit of the Mexicans, and came in touch 
with them at Resaca de la Palma about 
four o'clock on the afternoon of the 9th of 
May. 

Deploying his infantry to the left and 
right of the road, Taylor drove in the Mex- 
ican left, but their stronger right wing re- 
sisted stubbornly. Realizing that the three 
guns on the road were the keystone of the 
defense, Taylor ordered Captain May to 
charge and take them with his squadron of 
dragoons. Covered by a round of grape- 
shot from an American battery. May's 
troopers charged down the road in column 
of fours, rode over the Mexican guns, cut 
down the artillerymen, drove in the in- 
fantry supports, wheeled and cut their 

92 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

way out again, bringing with them a cap- 
tured general as a trophy of this gallant 
little charge that moved even a Mexican 
poet to sing its praise: 

"On they came, those Northern horsemen, 
On like eagles through the sun. 
Behind them came the Northern bayonet 
And the field was lost and won/* 



''The Northern bayonet," In the capable 
hands of the Eighth Infantry and part of 
the Fifth, followed hard on the heels of the 
dragoons. Ridgely's battery galloped up 
to the edge of the ravine, unlimbered and 
poured grape-shot into the very faces of 
the Mexican infantry. General Arista, 
who up to this time had refused to believe 
that any serious attack was contemplated 
and had been writing in his tent, now 
dropped his pen and ran out to rally his 
cavalry and other reserves for a counter- 
charge. But the American infantry massed 
on the road and scattered through the 
chaparral met them with so hot a fire that 
the Mexicans broke and fled. 

The last Mexican to leave the field was 
93 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

the brave color-sergeant of the Tampico 
veterans, who vainly tried to rally the bat- 
talion whose colors he had saved. Hundreds 
of muskets and all the cannon were aban- 
doned by the flying army. When the 
Americans entered the captured camp, they 
found the fires burning, five hundred pack- 
mules tethered and their packs arranged 
neatly on the ground, and General Arista's 
personal baggage and private letters were 
still in his tent. 

Hotly pursued by the American dragoons 
and field-batteries. General Arista and what 
was left of his army fled through the gath- 
ering darkness to the Rio Grande. The 
guns of Fort Brown opened at long range 
on the demoralized fugitives huddled to- 
gether on the bank or crowded into the 
one tiny ferry-boat, and many were drowned 
in the flooded river before the survivors 
found temporary shelter behind the bat- 
teries of Matamoros. The total Mexican 
loss was conservatively estimated, in Arista's 
official report, at 262 killed, 355 wounded, 
and 185 missing. Thirty-nine Americans 
had been killed and 82 wounded. 

On the day of the battle of Resaca de la 
94 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

Palma the news reached Washington of 
the outbreak of hostiUties and the capture 
of Thornton's dragoons. The following 
day was Sunday, and Polk spent It In writ- 
ing a message to Congress which was de- 
livered on Monday morning. Rehearsing 
his version of the grievances of the United 
States against Mexico, Polk declared: 

'"Mexico has passed the boundary of the 
United States, has invaded our territory, 
and shed American blood upon American 
soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities 
have commenced and that the two nations 
are now at war. I Invoke the prompt ac- 
tion of Congress to recognize the existence 
of the war, and to place at the disposition 
of the executive the means of prosecuting 
the war with vigor and thus hastening the 
restoration of peace. To this end I recom- 
mend that authority be given to call into 
the public service a large body of volunteers 
to serve for not less than six or twelve 
months, unless sooner discharged. ... I 
further recommend that a liberal provision 
be made for sustaining our entire military 
force and furnishing it with supplies and 
munitions of war. ..." 
95 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Spurred by the wide-spread fears for the 
safety of Taylor's Httle army, known to be 
facing superior numbers of the enemy, 
Congress quickly carried out the Presi- 
dent's recommendations. A bill that was 
passed by the House of Representatives 
that same Monday, by the Senate on Tues- 
day, and made a law by the President's 
signature on Wednesday, May 13, declared 
that, whereas, " By the act of the Republic 
of Mexico, a state of war exists between 
that government and the United States," 
the President was authorized to call for 
50,000 volunteers to serve for twelve 
months or the war. Ten million dollars 
were appropriated to defray the first costs 
of the conflict. 

All our wars have been popular at the 
beginning, and the first Mexican War be- 
gan with two brilliant victories that evoked 
an outburst of national enthusiasm com- 
parable to that caused fifty-two years later 
by the battle of Manila Bay. Throughout 
the country bonfires blazed, volunteer com- 
panies began to drill, and mass meetings 
cheered the army and pledged their sup- 
port to the administration. Confident in 
96 



PALO ALTO AND RESACA DE LA PALMA 

the nation's support, Polk and his advisers 
proceeded to the easiest and most profitable 
part of the war, the conquest of California 
and the southwest. 



97 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

THOUGH the Jesuits had maintained 
missions on the arid shores of Lower 
CaHfornia since the end of the seventeenth 
century, it was not until after the expulsion 
of the Society of Jesus from Spanish Amer- 
ica in 1767 that the colonization of Upper 
California began. It was prompted by 
the fear that the English — or perhaps the 
*' Muscovites" from Russian America — 
were about to found a colony at Monterey; 
the same fear that brought about the sei- 
zure of that port seventy-five years later by 
Commodore Jones.* The Franciscan friars, 
to whom the work was now intrusted, made 
fast progress under the energetic leadership 
of the famous Brother Junipero Serro, and 
with the not always helpful assistance of 
the Spanish colonial office. From San 
Diego to San Francisco missions were 

* RIchman, "California," chap. V. 

98 



THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

easily established among the lazy, degener- 
ate California Indians. Each mission was 
indifferently guarded by a detachment of 
^'Presidial troops" — not regular soldiers, 
but half-disciplined military colonists, who 
debauched the converts and quarrelled with 
the friars. Very few civilian settlers could 
be induced to go from Mexico to Cali- 
fornia, though it was a veritable lazy man's 
paradise. Wheat was so easily grown that 
there was bread enough for all, cattle and 
sheep abounded, and wild horses were so 
plentiful that they were sometimes killed 
as vermin. 

Even before the Mexican War of Inde- 
pendence, which destroyed the already de- 
caying authority of the friars, but was 
otherwise unfelt In this far region of New 
Spain, English, Russian, and American 
traders were plying up and down the coast 
of California. The Californlans were too 
glad to be able to buy English hardware 
and Yankee ''notions" to pay much heed 
to either Spanish or Mexican prohibitive 
tariffs, yet they were too lazy to flay and 
clean the hides of their own cattle the 
traders wished to buy, but left this work to 

99 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

the sailors, as you may read in Dana's 
''Two Years Before the Mast." 

Even more stringent than Mexico's tariff 
on foreign goods was Mexico's ban on for- 
eign settlers in California. But it was in- 
evitable that the systematic evasion of the 
former should lead to the nullification of 
the latter. Sailors deserted their ships to 
turn beach-combers, agents acquired resi- 
dences, and traders built stores in every 
port in California. To be sure, these out- 
landers remained with the tacit permission 
of the Californians. But presently a newer, 
rougher, and more numerous foreign ele- 
ment appeared, that cared no more about 
native Californians and Mexican laws 
than Miles Standish did for the Pequot 
Indians and their tribal customs. These 
rude intruders were the American frontiers- 
men who came in ever-increasing numbers, 
year after year, over the passes of the 
Rockies or down from Oregon, to spy out 
the rich lands of California and gradually 
to form their ov/n settlements in the Sacra- 
mento Valley. Unlike the Texans, these 
Americans on the Pacific coast had neither 
been invited into the country nor granted 

lOO 



THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

tracts of land. They had no legal right to 
remain in California, and did so simply be- 
cause the Californian government, whose 
leaders were constantly organizing petty 
^'revolutions" either against each other 
or against the distant rulers in Mexico 
City, was too weak to evict them. These 
American squatters were only too ready to 
start fighting on their own account at the 
first rumor of hostilities between Mexico 
and the United States. 

**If you ascertain with certainty that 
Mexico has declared war against the United 
States, " read the standing orders that Polk 
had sent to Commodore Sloat, who had 
succeeded the impulsive Jones in command 
of the Pacific squadron, "you will at once 
possess yourself of the port of San Francisco 
and blockade or occupy such other ports as 
your force will permit." 

New orders to Sloat, bidding him "in 
the event of actual hostilities" to seize the 
ports without further delay, were sent out 
in November, 1845, by the frigate Congress, 
commanded by Commodore Stockton, who 
was also charged with a confidential letter 
to Mr. Larkin, the American consul at 

lOI 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Monterey. As a secret agent of his govern- 
ment, Larkin was ''to cultivate the good- 
will and friendship of the Californians," 
whether California was sold by Mexico to 
the United States, or revolted from Mexico 
and wished to enter the Union, or was con- 
quered by the United States in case Mexico 
declared war. 

Because the Congress was to make a 
long passage by way of Cape Horn and 
Hawaii, a cipher copy of the orders to 
Sloat and verbal instructions to Larkin were 
intrusted to Lieutenant Gillespie of the 
Marine Corps, who was to disguise himself 
as a civilian travelling for pleasure and 
hasten overland to California through Mex- 
ico. Gillespie also took with him private 
letters from Senator Benton to Benton's 
son-in-law, Captain Fremont. 

John Charles Fremont, the son of a 
French father and a Virginian mother, was 
born in Savannah, Georgia, on January 21, 
181 3. He taught mathematics in the navy, 
became a railroad surveyor, and was ap- 
pointed a second lieutenant in the corps of 
topographical engineers in 1838. After his 
marriage to the daughter of Thomas H. 
102 



THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

Benton, in 1842, Fremont was detailed to 
make important explorations in the West, 
and greatly distinguished himself by his 
daring, his accurate surveys, and his vivid 
accounts of hitherto little-known regions. 
He had followed the Oregon trail from St. 
Louis, up the north fork of the Platte, and 
across the South Pass of the Rocky Moun- 
tains in 1842. During the following year 
he had explored the Salt Lake region, re- 
visited Oregon, and descended the Columbia 
River to the Pacific, crossed the Sierra 
Nevada in midwinter into California, dis- 
proved the existence of the mythical "River 
Buenaventura," then supposed to flow into 
San Francisco Bay, and returned south 
through the San Joaquin Valley and east 
by the Spanish trail from Los Angeles. 

On his third expedition, in the summer of 
1845, Fremont had with him a party of 
fifty men of the topographical corps, and 
after making explorations in the unin- 
habited northern part of California, where 
the Mexican authorities had given them 
tacit permission to go, he led his force into 
inhabited Mexican territory near Monterey. 
To General Jose Castro, the commanding 
103 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

officer of that district, Fremont explained 
that his men were not soldiers but civilians, 
surveying a route from the United States 
to the Pacific. But they had no passports, 
so Castro ordered them out of the country. 
Whereat Fremont built a log fort only a 
few miles from Monterey, hoisted the stars 
and stripes, and breathed bombastic de- 
fiance to Castro. The protestations of 
Consul Larkin and the assembling of a 
force by Castro compelled Fremont to 
withdraw to the Sacramento Valley and 
thence to Oregon, where he prepared to re- 
turn east. He had already accomplished 
sufficient mischief, for his behavior before 
Monterey was one of the reasons given by 
President Paredes for declaring war. 

But on the 9th of May, 1846, Fremont 
met Lieutenant Gillespie at Klamath Lake, 
Oregon, and received from him the letters 
from Senator Benton. Fremont afterward 
claimed that Gillespie also brought him the 
news of the outbreak of the Mexican War, 
but that would have been a physical im- 
possibility, for that news had only reached 
Washington on that very day, the day of 
Resaca de la Palma. Fremont likewise 
104 



THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

professed to have been given at the same 
time mysterious secret orders from Presi- 
dent Polk that justified his subsequent 
behavior, but what these were he never re- 
vealed, nor would he divulge the contents 
of his father-in-law's letters. From what 
we now know of the state of Benton's knowl- 
edge at the time of writing them, these letters 
could have contained nothing more definite 
than a suggestion that Fremont remain on 
the coast to await developments in view of 
possible hostilities with Mexico or a possi- 
ble seizure of California by Great Britain. 

The only secret orders known to have 
been sent by Polk to any one in California 
were his instructions to Consul Larkin to 
*' cultivate the good- will and friendship of 
the Californians" in any case, but primarily 
to reconcile them to the purchase of Cali- 
fornia by the United States. When he 
sent those instructions in November, 1845, 
Polk fully expected to carry out that pur- 
chase, and it would have been utterly for- 
eign to his purpose to have created a second 
secret agent to deliberately undo the work of 
the first. It is much easier to believe that 
the erratic Fremont, whose conceit far out- 
105 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

weighed both his discretion and his sense 
of duty and who was burning to revenge 
himself on Jose Castro for having ''humih- 
ated" him before Monterey, proceeded to 
act on his own initiative. 

We now come to the famous incident of 
"'Fremont's Ride." According to his own 
account, Fremont learned that the "'Span- 
iards" were about to attack the American 
settlers in Cahfornia, dashed back across the 
mountains, ralhed the Americans, and saved 
Cahfornia to the United States. As a mat- 
ter of fact, when Fremont returned to Cali- 
fornia, at the same time deliberately deceiv- 
ing Gillespie about his intentions to return 
to the East, no attacks were being made by 
the Mexicans on the Americans. To be 
sure. General Jose Castro had assembled an 
""army" of 70 men, but he was planning 
to use it against his old rival in office. Gov- 
ernor Pio Pico. Nevertheless, the muster- 
ing of this force, together with the affair 
before Monterey, the mysterious comings 
and goings of United States officers, the ap- 
pearance of American war-ships off the 
coast, and a thousand and one disquieting 
rumors, most of which seem to have been 
106 



THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

born in Fremont's camp, was enough to 
stir the suspicious and fight-loving American 
settlers to a revolt of their own. 

A band of Americans, prompted by Fre- 
mont, stole a herd of horses destined for 
Castro's camp on June lo. Sonoma, the 
largest Mexican settlement north of San 
Francisco Bay, was captured without re- 
sistance four days later, and there 33 Amer- 
icans hoisted a "banner with the strange 
device" of a grizzly bear, and proclaimed 
the Callfornlan Republic. The insurgents 
confidently appealed for aid to Commander 
Montgomery, of the U. S. S. Portsmouth, 
then lying in San Francisco Bay, but that 
officer very properly maintained a strict 
neutrality. Fremont, however, lost no 
time in joining the "Bear" party. Under 
his leadership the little village of Yerba 
Buena, or San Francisco, was seized and 
the guns spiked In Its deserted presidio. 
The "Bears" now numbered 200 men, 
and had already fought a preliminary 
skirmish with the Mexicans, whose leaders, 
Pico and Castro, had sunk their differences 
and joined their forces In the presence of a 
common enemy. 

107 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

But before serious hostilities began, Com- 
mander Montgomery received important 
orders from Commodore Sloat. That aged 
and infirm officer had waited several days 
even after he had learned of the battles of 
Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma for a 
formal declaration of war, till he had finally 
persuaded himself to take action. Sloat 
occupied Monterey on July 7, and the fol- 
lowing day Montgomery received orders to 
take possession of San Francisco Bay. The 
grizzly-bear flag was joyfully replaced by 
the stars and stripes, and the Californian 
Republic disappeared from history. 

Commodore Stockton in the Congress 
reached Monterey on July 15, twenty-four 
hours before the arrival of the great ship- 
of-the-line Collingwood, flag-ship of the 
British Pacific squadron. Because of this 
coincidence, a legend soon sprang up about 
a "race" between Sloat and Stockton on 
one side and the British admiral on the 
other, for the possession of California. 
But nothing could have been less like a race 
than the slow and uncertain movements of 
all three of these commanders, and it would 
not have made the slightest difference to 
108 



THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

California if the Collingzuood had reached 
Monterey even before the Congress had 
cleared from Honolulu. Little as Great 
Britain liked to see Texas and California 
become American, its government liked 
still less the idea of another war with the 
United States. Lord Aberdeen, the pre- 
mier, had said so very frankly to the Mex- 
icans when they approached him with hopes 
of an alliance.* 

Commodore Sloat, who was very old and 
infirm, now turned over his command to 
Stockton, at the latter's pointed suggestion, 
and went home, where he was severely 
reprimanded for his delay in taking pos- 
session of California. This task was rapidly 
and easily accomplished. General Jose 
Castro and Governor Pio Pico fled to Mex- 
ico, and every town in California was soon 
occupied by the Americans. Fremont was 
appointed by Stockton, first, to the com- 
mand of a battalion of local volunteers, 
and, later, civil governor. 

Despatches were sent off overland to 
Washington by the hand of the famous 
frontiersman, Kit Carson. But one hun- 

* See Rives, chap. XXXL 
109 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

and twenty miles west of Santa- Fe Carson 
was met by 300 United States dragoons 
under General Kearny. With this hand- 
ful of regulars and 900 Missouri volunteers 
under Colonel Doniphan, Kearny had 
marched unresisted from Fort Leavenworth 
to Santa Fe, occupied that ancient city, and 
annexed all New Mexico to the United 
States (see page 139). Leaving Doniphan's 
volunteers behind, Kearny had pushed on 
with the cavalry till he met Carson and 
learned of the occupation of California. 
This induced him to send back two-thirds 
of his dragoons and proceed with the re- 
maining hundred and a couple of light 
howitzers. 

But the nineteen-hundred-mile march 
from Fort Leavenworth had been hard on 
horseflesh, and when Kearny's command 
reached California only the officers and 
twelve of the troopers still retained their 
horses. The rest were either mounted on 
mules or marched afoot with the guns and 
wagons. At San Pascual, thirty-eight miles 
from San Diego, they were attacked by 160 
superbly mounted Mexican Californians, 
under Don Andres Pico, brother of the 
no 



THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

governor. Repulsed by the American's 
fire, the CaHfornians let the few American 
horsemen scatter in pursuit, then wheeled 
and lanced them at leisure before the dra- 
goons on mules could come up. Twenty 
Americans were killed and i8 wounded, 
including Kearny himself, in this skir- 
mish. To add to the Mexicans' triumph, 
the mules harnessed to one of the American 
howitzers stampeded and took the gun with 
them into the Californian lines. 

In spite of his wounds, Kearny joined 
Stockton's marines, bluejackets, and volun- 
teers at San Diego on December 12, and 
on the 20th the United States forces, 500 
strong, started for Los Angeles, from which 
city the Americans had been driven by a 
revolt under the leadership of Don Andres 
Pico and Don Mariano Flores. 

This revolt, which for the moment had 
regained for Mexico all southern California, 
was short-lived. Kearny and Stockton 
forced the passage of the San Gabriel River 
on January 8, 1847, defeated the insurgents 
on the plain of the Mesa next day, and made 
an unopposed entry into Los Angeles on 
the loth. Flores and Pico, fleeing for their 
III 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

lives, met Fremont and his battalion of 
mounted volunteers as they came up from 
Santa Barbara and with him signed a capit- 
ulation. The subsequent arrival of ad- 
ditional troops — a battalion of Mormon 
volunteers from Fort Leavenworth, and a 
battery of regular artillery (among whose 
officers was Lieutenant William Tecumseh 
Sherman), which with a regiment of New 
York volunteers had been sent round Cape 
Horn — put an end to Mexico's hopes of 
recovering her lost province of California. 

Kearny, who was Fremont's superior 
officer, refused to recognize the latter as 
governor of California, which office Kearny 
now assumed himself. Fremont was or- 
dered to report himself under arrest at 
Washington, where he was court-martialled 
and dismissed from the service, but par- 
doned and reinstated by President Polk. 
So greatly did Fremont strike the popular 
imagination that he was nominated for the 
presidency by the new Republican party in 
1856, but his prestige waned rapidly in the 
Civil War. Yet, charlatan though he was 
in many ways, there are few more pic- 
112 



THE CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA 

turesque and romantic figures in our his- 
tory than this teacher of mathematics, the 
'Pathfinder," the "Gray Mustang," John 
Charles Fremont. 



113 



CHAPTER IX 
MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

REFUSING to grant an armistice, Taylor 
. crossed the Rio Grande on May i8 and 
occupied Matamoros, hastily evacuated by 
Arista, who retreated into the interior with 
all speed. Taylor's "Army of Occupation" 
was now an "Army of Invasion," with its 
headquarters on Mexican soil, but before 
it could advance any farther both men and 
supplies were needed. 

The first eight regiments of volunteers, 
called for by Taylor himself from Louisi- 
ana and Texas, reported for duty before 
the middle of June, but they had been 
called out under the old militia law of 
1795? for three months' service only. At 
the end of that time they all marched home 
again, except the two Texan cavalry regi- 
ments, which re-enlisted for twelve months 
or the war. Soon many more regiments of 
twelve-month volunteers poured into Mata- 
moros, much sooner than Taylor could ob- 
114 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

tain the tents, blankets, baggage-wagons, 
and the thousand and one other things 
needed by even the smallest army in a 
barren and hostile land. As in '6i and '98 
there was great impatience on the part of 
the administration and public, who de- 
manded an immediate advance, great diffi- 
culty on the part of the commanding gen- 
erals in explaining why such an advance 
was not practicable, and great mortality 
among the raw recruits in the hot, unsani- 
tary camps. Measles and typhoid killed 
many more American soldiers than did the 
Mexican bullets. To add to the army's 
discomfort, the rainy season, which had 
now begun, was the wettest that had been 
known for many years. 

But though the camps were flooded, the 
Rio Grande was also, and that usually shal- 
low stream was unexpectedly made navi- 
gable by steamboats. As soon as enough of 
these could be collected, the army was 
transported up-stream, and a new base 
established at Camargo for the advance on 
Monterey. 

Taylor's army marched out of Camargo 
at the beginning of September 6,000 strong, 
IIS 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

almost equally divided between regulars 
and volunteers. There were four field- 
batteries of regular artillery — Ridgely's, 
Bragg's, Duncan's, and Taylor's — and a 
battering-train of two twenty-four-pounders 
and a ten-inch mortar. The garrison of 
Monterey, commanded by General Am- 
pudia, was about equal to the force that 
was marching to besiege it. Four thousand 
Mexican infantry and 2,000 lancers held 
the town with more than forty field-pieces, 
besides several heavy guns of position 
mounted on the fortifications. 

The Monterey of 1846 was not the Amer- 
icanized city of to-day, with its street-cars 
and factories and 100,000 inhabitants. It 
was a sleepy little Spanish-American town 
of 10,000 or 12,000 people, and narrow 
streets that ran at right angles to each 
other from the great plaza in front of the 
cathedral. Roughly rectangular in shape, 
with its long axis running east and west, 
Monterey lay on the north bank of the 
River of San Juan de Monterey, that flowed 
into the Rio Grande not far from Camargo. 
The plain on which the city stands is sur- 
rounded by high mountains on all sides 
116 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

except the north. That approach was well 
guarded by the citadel — a square, bastioned 
fortification, called by the Americans "'The 
Black Fort/' To the west rose an isolated 
steep hill, the Loma de Independencia, 
crowned by the huge, unfinished Bishop's 
Palace, a thick-walled masonry building, 
easily converted into a fort. Beneath its 
guns the road to Saltillo left the western end 
of Monterey, turned southward across the 
river and passed between two hills, on each 
of which had been thrown up a one-gun 
battery, called respectively Fort Soldado 
and Fort Federacion. The eastern end of 
the city, where the river curved to the 
north, was protected by three redoubts, 
mounting three or four guns apiece, but 
open in the rear. Fort Libertad and Fort 
Diablo stood nearest the river in the order 
named. The most important of these three 
redoubts was the one at the northeast angle 
of the city, called Fort Teneria, from the 
brook that flowed past it from a tannery a 
few blocks within the town. 

Taylor's army arrived and went into 
camp at the wood of San Domingo, or the 
"Walnut Springs," three miles northeast 
117 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

of Monterey on September 19. Confident 
that the Mexicans would keep strictly on 
the defensive, Taylor did not hesitate to 
divide his own force. Worth's division of 
regulars, with a regiment of Texan cavalry, 
made a wide detour to the southwest, seized 
and held the road to Saltillo, stormed the 
two little batteries that had guarded it, 
and turned their guns on the Bishop's 
Palace. At three o'clock in the morning 
of Tuesday, the 22d, during a down- 
pour of rain, six companies of regulars and 
200 Texans captured a small earthwork at 
the extreme western end of the long crest 
of the Loma de Independencia, hauled up 
a twelve-pounder, and began firing it into 
the Bishop's Palace. Out swarmed the 
garrison, reinforced by troops from the 
city, but the Americans met their charge 
with so deadly a fire that the Mexicans fled 
back into the palace and out the other side 
with Worth's men after them. The de- 
tachment that had captured the forts across 
the river now recrossed in haste, Duncan's 
and Taylor's batteries galloped up, and the 
demoralized defenders were driven back 
into the city. 

118 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

Hearing heavy firing at the other end of 
the town, Worth advanced next day down 
the two parallel streets that led from the 
Bishop's Palace to the Cathedral Plaza. 
Instead of storming the barricades they 
encountered at every corner, the Americans 
broke their way through the walls of the 
houses, as the Texans had done at San An- 
tonio de Bexar. By nightfall Worth's men 
had reached and occupied a large building 
within one block of the plaza, and during 
Wednesday night they brought up and 
mounted three pieces of artillery on its roof. 
They were ready to open a most destruc- 
tive fire when the white flag was displayed 
at dawn. 

To create a diversion in Worth's favor, 
Taylor had ordered an assault on the eastern 
end of the city on Monday morning. The 
small American siege-battery, scantily sup- 
plied with ammunition, made little impres- 
sion on the citadel, or "Black Fort," and 
when the First, Third, and Fourth Infan- 
try under Twiggs attempted to storm the 
Teneria redoubt, they were raked by a 
flanking fire from the citadel, and repulsed 
with heavy loss. As the regulars fell back, 
119 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Quitman's brigade of volunteers, the First 
Tennessee and the Mississippi Rifles under 
Colonel Jefferson Davis dashed gallantly 
forward, drove back an attempted sortie 
by the Mexican lancers, swept over the 
walls of Fort Teneria and captured it, 
garrison and all. But Fort Diablo held out 
after three assaults, and at nightfall the 
Americans withdrew, leaving the First 
Kentucky to hold Fort Teneria. 

Tuesday was passed in long-range bom- 
bardment. That night Ampudia ordered 
the evacuation of the two forts he still held 
at the eastern end of the city, and concen- 
trated his men in the thick-walled houses 
and barricaded streets about the Cathe- 
dral Plaza. Quitman's brigade, supported 
by Garland's regulars, entered the eastern 
end of the city on Wednesday morning as 
Worth, hearing the heavy fire that greeted 
them, advanced from the west. Instead of 
fighting from house to house, Quitman's 
men fought their way doggedly up the open 
street, raked by grape-shot and swept by 
the fire of swarms of snipers on the sand- 
bagged roofs. 

120 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

"But on, still on our column kept 
Through hissing sheets of fiery spray, 
Where fell the dead the living stepped 
Still storming on the guns that swept 
The slippery streets of Monterey." 

When they were within a block of the 
plaza the ammunition ran out, and Lieu- 
tenant U. S. Grant, of the Fourth Infantry, 
volunteered to ride back for more. Hang- 
ing over the side of his horse like an Indian, 
Grant galloped out of the city, with the 
Mexicans firing at him from every street cor- 
ner. Instead of sending the ammunition, 
however, Taylor ordered Quitman to with- 
draw, and postponed the assault until next 
morning, pending a consultation with Gen- 
eral Worth. 

But on Thursday morning General Am- 
pudia sent Taylor a white flag and offered 
to capitulate. Though he might well have 
insisted on an unconditional surrender, Tay- 
lor was satisfied with the evacuation of the 
city and citadel. Two days later Ampu- 
dia and his army marched out free men, 
with their small arms, one field-battery, and 
all the honors of war — bands playing, flags 

121 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

flying, and the American soldiers looking 
on with great interest. There was to be an 
armistice for the next eight weeks, unless the 
truce were terminated sooner by the action 
of the government on either side. 

The American Government was extremely 
displeased with Taylor for granting the 
armistice for which, however, he advanced 
military, humane, and political reasons. 
To have pressed the assault would have 
cost many more American lives — his army 
had already lost 120 killed and 350 wounded 
— and his small force could not have sur- 
rounded the city and prevented the escape 
of the garrison. Nor was he ready for an 
advance. 

"'In regard to the temporary cessation of 
hostilities, the fact that we are not at this 
moment (within eleven days of the termina- 
tion of the period fixed by the convention) 
prepared to move forward in force, is a 
sufficient explanation of the military rea- 
sons which dictated this suspension of arms. 
It paralyzed the enemy during a period 
when, from the want of necessary means, 
we could not possibly move. . . . 

^'In the conference with General Ampudia 
122 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

I was distinctly told by him that he had 
invited it to spare the further effusion of 
blood and because General Santa Anna had 
declared himself favorable to peace. 

"The result of the entire operation has 
been to throw the Mexican army back more 
than three hundred miles to the city of San 
Luis Potosi, and to open the country to us, 
as far as we choose to penetrate it, up to 
the same point."* 

Paredes was no longer President — he had 
been driven out by a revolution on August 
4. A week later, General Santa Anna ap- 
peared off Vera Cruz on the British steamer 
Arab^ and was permitted to pass through 
the United States fleet blockading the port 
because of his secret agreement with Presi- 
dent Polk. Though he did not have him- 
self "elected" President of Mexico until 
December, Santa Anna immediately ob- 
tained control of the government and 
prompted its refusal to discuss peace on 
any terms. For all his pacific promises 
that so completely gulled James K. Polk, 
Santa Anna knew his own countrymen too 

* Taylor to Adjutant-General Jones, November 8, 1846. House 
Rep. Doc. 60, 30th Congress, 1st Session, 359. 

123 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

well to imagine that any Mexican govern- 
ment could last for twenty-four hours after 
refusing to fight an invading enemy. And 
no other Mexican of the period was as cap- 
able as he in raising and organizing large 
armies in a short time. 

As it permitted the return of Santa Anna 
to Mexico in 1846, so in 1898 the United 
States Government brought the exiled 
Aguinaldo from Hong-Kong to help drive 
the Spaniards out of the Philippines, and 
in 1914 did its utmost to aid Generals Car- 
ranza and Villa in getting rid of the ob- 
noxious dictator Huerta. And in each of 
the first two cases, and possibly the third, 
our sincere desire for peace led us into mak- 
ing a present of their most efficient leader 
to our opponents in a long and difficult 
foreign war. 

Before the Americans had fully realized 
that he was not "favorable to peace," Santa 
Anna was at San Luis Potosi drilling re- 
cruits and concentrating the garrisons from 
Monterey, Tampico, and all the smaller 
towns of northern Mexico into an army. 
Tampico had been taken without a fight 
by our naval forces in the middle of No- 
124 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

vember, while Taylor had at the same time 
caused Saltillo to be occupied by General 
Worth, also without meeting any resis- 
tance. 

General Wool, commanding the "Army 
of the Centre" of 2,400 men, had left San 
Antonio in September to march directly 
on the city of Chihuahua, while Taylor was 
advancing farther east. When Wool was 
halted by the armistice, he had got as far 
into Mexico as Monclova. There, on his 
own initiative, subsequently affirmed by 
Taylor's orders. Wool abandoned the ad- 
vance on Chihuahua, turned toward Saltillo, 
and on December 5, after marching three 
hundred miles through Mexican territory 
without burning gunpowder, occupied Par- 
ras. 

Even after this partial concentration, the 
few thousand American troops in northern 
Mexico were scattered over an irregular 
front of nearly five hundred miles, from 
Parras to Tampico, while swarms of gue- 
rillas harassed the plodding wagon-trains 
bringing supplies from the Rio Grande, and 
Santa Anna mustered his forces to the 
southward at San Luis Potosi. 
125 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Polk's administration realized the mili- 
tary weakness of this position, now that 
the cherished scheme of making peace 
through Santa Anna had failed. Peace 
must now be won by striking harder and 
swifter blows than was possible in northern 
Mexico — the harder and swifter the better, 
as the war was no longer popular in the 
United States. This was convincingly 
shown by the result of the congressional 
elections in November, which turned a 
large Democratic majority in the House of 
Representatives into a small majority of 
Whigs. To make matters worse, General 
Taylor, who was getting all the credit and 
military glory of the war, was himself an 
ardent Whig. 

For all these reasons, Polk and his Cabi- 
net decided to suspend operations in the 
north and adopt General Winfield Scott's 
plan of sending an expedition to Mexico 
City by way of Vera Cruz. General Scott 
was now placed in command of this expedi- 
tion, and to strengthen his force he was 
given the flower of Taylor's army. All the 
regulars, except four field-batteries and two 
squadrons of dragoons under Lieutenant- 
126 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

Colonel May (who had been promoted for 
his gallantry at Resaca de la Palma), and 
all the experienced volunteers, except Jef- 
ferson Davis's Mississippi Rifles, were de- 
tached from Taylor's command, while he 
was ordered to fall back from Saltillo and 
remain on the defensive in and about Mon- 
terey. 

But Taylor, disregarding Scott's urgent 
advice to retreat, remained at Agua Nueva, 
eighteen miles south of Saltillo, drilling his 
new volunteers. And General Santa Anna, 
stung by the taunts of the Mexican news- 
papers about the inactivity of his army 
in its "Capua" of San Luis Potosi, sud- 
denly started, on January 27, 1847, on the 
two-hundred-and-forty-mile march, the last 
stage of which ran through a waterless 
desert, to Saltillo. His lancers captured 
two unsuspecting detachments of Arkansas 
and Kentucky cavalry near Encarnacion, 
and it was not until the early hours of Sun- 
day, February 21, that May's dragoons 
brought in the news that 2,000 Mexican 
lancers under General Minon had turned 
Taylor's left and were swooping down on 
Saltillo from the east. At midday Major 
127 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

McCuIIoch's Texas Rangers galloped in 
from the south to report that Santa Anna's 
main army, 20,000 strong, was advancing 
swiftly across the desert from Encarnacion. 

Taylor fell back that afternoon twelve 
miles to Buena Vista. Yell's Arkansas 
Cavalry, left as a rear-guard to cover the 
removal of stores, set fire to everything that 
was left and galloped off with what wagons 
they had had time to load as Santa Anna's 
vanguard dashed into the blazing town at 
midnight. 

Ordering General Miiion to fall on the 
Americans' rear, Santa Anna pressed on 
with all speed. Though his infantrymen 
were dropping with fatigue and tortured by 
thirst after their forced march across the 
desert, their commander gave them no rest 
nor even a chance to fill their empty can- 
teens, but urged them on remorselessly at the 
double-quick in the dust of the mounted 
advance-guard, while behind the artillery 
drivers flogged their weary mules. Well 
informed as to the smallness of Taylor's 
army, Santa Anna mistook his opponent's 
sudden but orderly retreat for a demoralized 
rout. He was astounded to find the Amer- 
128 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

icans calmly awaiting him at "the gorge of 
Buena Vista, which no one could pass, with 
any military eye, without selecting it as an 
admirable defensive point."* 

The ranch and hamlet of Buena Vista, so 
called from the "beautiful view" it com- 
manded, was situated three miles south of 
Saltillo in the centre of a long barren valley 
that runs almost due north and south and 
varies from a mile and a half to two miles 
in width. The road from San Luis Potosi 
ran up the west side of this valley, hugging 
the bed of a stream that was then, in Febru- 
ary and at the height of the dry season, a 
mere dusty arroyo. In the rainy season 
the heavy drainage down the slope from 
the hills on the east side of the valley cut 
many steep-banked barrancas, or gullies, 
sloping from east to west and breaking up 
the ground into irregular plateaus of vary- 
ing size. On the edge of the largest of these 
plateaus Taylor formed his line across the 
valley. His left flank, resting on the eastern 
hills, was weak, but his right was very 
strong. The key of his position was the 
deep, narrow gulch or pass where river and 

*Benham, "Recollections of Buena Vista," p. 9. 
129 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

road ran between the western cliffs and the 
edge of the plateau; and this point, called 
by the Mexicans "La Angostura," or '*The 
Narrows," was held by a battery under 
Captain Washington, well supported by 
"horse, foot, and dragoons." 

Santa Anna sent a white flag at noon on 
the 22d to demand General Taylor's sur- 
render, which was curtly refused. There 
was some long-range cannonading and skir- 
mishing that afternoon, but the real attack 
began at dawn on the 23 d. 

Santa Anna sent forward his infantry in 
three heavy columns, each supported by 
cavalry, while he himself remained in the 
rear in command of a strong reserve. The 
first Mexican column, advancing in close 
formation against the American right, was 
crumpled up by a storm of grape-shot from 
Washington's battery on the road, forced 
to seek shelter in the mouths of the nearest 
ravines and disposed of for the rest of the 
day. But the second column, advancing 
diagonally up one of the ravines, and the 
third column of light troops under Ampudia, 
keeping to the upper slope of the eastern 
hills, together struck the weak left of the 
130 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

American line. Here three field-pieces, sup- 
ported by the Second Indiana, a raw vol- 
unteer regiment that had never before 
been under fire, held their ground against 
overwhelming odds for half an hour. But 
at the end of that time every man and 
horse attached to one of the guns had been 
shot down, and the other two pieces were 
limbered up and withdrawn. An orderly 
retreat before superior numbers was too 
much for the untrained Second Indiana, 
which broke and fled to the rear in utter 
rout as the exultant Mexicans poured 
through the break in the American line. 

But the centre held fast, and from the 
right, where the assaulting column had been 
repulsed, came Bragg's battery and the 
Second Kentucky to reinforce the left. 
The Arkansas and Kentucky cavalry hurled 
themselves on the second Mexican column, 
and though driven back with heavy loss 
checked it for many valuable minutes. Am- 
pudia's men, driving the American skir- 
mishers before them, had advanced far up 
the valley and completely turned the Amer- 
ican left flank. 

Taylor himself now galloped up from 
131 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Saltillo with two troops of dragoons, and 
followed by the Mississippi Rifles. That 
regiment, joined by the Third Indiana that 
was no longer needed to support Washing- 
ton's battery on the right, received the 
Mexican advance with the utmost steadi- 
ness and a deadly fire that drove in the 
heads of both columns. The Mexican 
cavalry circled round the American in- 
fantry and became engaged with a mixed 
force of May's dragoons and Kentucky and 
Arkansas volunteers, who succeeded in 
driving them away from Buena Vista. 
Both that ranch and the town of Saltillo 
were filled with stragglers from the battle- 
field who had stopped their flight and joined 
the teamsters and camp-guards in defend- 
ing the buildings and wagon-trains against 
the recurring attacks of the Mexican cav- 
alry. 

The retreat had now stopped after the 
American army had been bent back into a 
letter L, reversed, with the long limb run- 
ning north and south at right angles to the 
original line, and facing the Mexican cav- 
alry and infantry who thronged the east 
side of the valley above the heads of the 
132 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

ravines. For two hours or more both sides 
pounded steadily at each other with can- 
non and musketry, till the Mexican right 
and centre began to fall back under our 
artillery fire. A second mass of lancers 
charged down the slope and threatened to 
overwhelm the handful of American cav- 
alry at Buena Vista till Reynolds's battery 
came to their aid with grape-shot. Lancers, 
dragoons, and mounted volunteers, thrust- 
ing and hacking in tangled conflict, swept 
through the hamlet of Buena Vista and 
out on the plain to the west, where the 
Mexicans galloped off round the entire 
American army and rejoined Santa Anna. 

The third charge of the Mexican lancers 
was directed at the First Mississippi. This 
regiment had been retained by Taylor not 
only because its colonel, Jefferson Davis, 
was the general's son-in-law, but because 
Davis was a West Pointer, who had brought 
his command to a high state of drill and 
efficiency. Armed with percussion-lock 
Whitney rifles, that far outranged their 
opponents' flintlocks, the Mississippians 
had caused the dense masses of Mexican 
infantry to suffer heavily, but the riflemen 
133 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

had no bayonets with which to resist a 
charge of cavalry. Forming his regiment 
into a re-entrant angle, or letter V, with 
the open end toward the lancers and across 
the ravine down which they were advancing 
rapidly in column of fours, Davis had his 
men hold their fire till the foremost troopers 
were nearly upon them, when one terrible 
volley emptied scores of Mexican saddles 
and sent the surviving lancers back even 
faster than they had come. 

Hard pressed by the now advancing and 
exultant American infantry, penned in 
against the eastern side of the valley, and 
in Imminent danger of capture, the Mexican 
left wing raised the white flag. Deceived 
by this, the Americans halted and ceased 
firing long enough for the Mexicans to 
extricate themselves and escape by the 
way they had come, after which they 
promptly resumed the fight. 

Realizing that the critical moment of 
the battle had come, Santa Anna hurled 
his entire reserve against the angle of the 
American line. There Lieutenant O'Brien, 
of the Fourth Artillery, fought his two field- 
pieces till they were captured, deliberately 
134 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

sacrificing his guns to save time for Taylor 
to bring up reinforcements. Outnumbered 
and shot to pieces, the Second Kentucky 
and Second IlHnois were being driven back 
down the nearest ravine, and the gap in the 
American Hne was wide and ominous. 

** Speed, speed, artillery, to the front, where the hur- 
ricane of fire 

Crushes those noble regiments, reluctant to retire ! 

Speed swiftly ! Gallop ! Ah, they come I Again 
Bragg climbs the ridge 

And his grape sweeps down the swarming foe as a 
strong man moweth sedge."* 

"A little more grape, Captain Bragg," 
said General Taylor coolly, a command that 
struck the popular imagination and was 
echoed throughout the United States in 
the next presidential campaign.f The Mis- 
sissippi Rifles and Third Indiana came up 
at the double as the Mexicans fell back. 
Nightfall found both armies back in their 
original positions. 

So ended the battle of Buena Vista, the 

* Albert Pike, "Battle of Buena Vista." 

t Or "as Bragg told me, unluckily for the poetry of the story, 
*Give 'em hell, Bragg!' " Benham, p. 23. 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

hardest-fought action of the war. Both 
sides claimed the victory, and when he re- 
turned to Mexico City Santa Anna made a 
great show of the prisoners taken at En- 
carnacion and the captured American guns. 
But during the night after the battle, while 
Taylor was making ready for another day 
of fighting, Santa Anna abandoned his 
wounded and retreated as hastily as he had 
advanced. Hundreds of his disheartened 
and exhausted soldiers died and thousands 
deserted during the terrible march across 
the waterless waste, and Santa Anna 
brought back to San Luis Potosi less than 
half of the 20,000 he had led out so con- 
fidently to the north. 

Taylor's army had gone into action 
4,754 strong, and had lost 746 officers and 
men killed, wounded, or missing. Count- 
ing Miiion's cavalry, which had remained 
near Saltillo picking up stragglers and 
waiting for the Americans to retreat, Santa 
Anna had had at least 16,000 or 17,000 ef- 
fectives within striking distance on the day 
of the battle. Had General Miiion chosen 
to disregard the strict letter of his orders 
and hurled his 2,000 lancers on the Ameri- 
136 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

can rear, the story of Buena Vista might 
well have been written differently. 

The battle of Buena Vista put an end to 
the fighting in northern Mexico, made 
Jefferson Davis the hero of the South, and 
Zachary Taylor the next President of the 
United States. 



137 



CHAPTER X 

NEW MEXICO AND CHIHUAHUA 

"O'er the bitter and beautiful desert, in the dust and 
heat and haze, 

Through mornings of ruby and topaz and evenings 
of chrysoprase. 

The golden noon of a pitiless June and the heat of 
a fierce July, 

We tramped and Hmped till the August flame lit 
up the merciless sky, 

All the thirsty way to Santa Fe, and there, with- 
out a blow. 

We took in a day to keep for ay the land of New 
Mexico." 

— CuYLER Van Slycke. 

"npHE land of New Mexico" had been 
X formally taken possession of in the 
name of the King of Spain by Don Juan 
de Onate, on April 30, 1598. The Span- 
iards estabUshed missions among the Pueblo 
Indians and maintained a small garrison in 
Santa Fe. Except for the great Indian 
uprising at the end of the seventeenth 
century, the life of New Mexico was placid 
138 



NEW MEXICO AND CHIHUAHUA 

and uneventful, even during the Mexican 
War of Independence. After 1821 there 
was a constantly increasing trade over the 
old Sante Fe trail to and from St. Louis. 
The abortive Texan expedition against 
New Mexico in 1841 failed without firing a 
shot (see page 53), where five years later 
the United States forces, with an equal lack 
of bloodshed, succeeded. 

At the outbreak of the First Mexican 
War, Colonel Philip Kearny, of the First 
Dragoons, was at Fort Leavenworth, in 
what is now the State of Kansas, with 
six troops of his regiment, 300 strong. 
Polk made Kearny a brigadier-general, 
in command of the *'Army of the West,'* 
consisting of his own regulars, the First 
Missouri Mounted Volunteers under 
Colonel Doniphan, two batteries and two 
infantry companies, also of volunteers — 
a total force of 1,700 men and 16 guns. 
Over 1,500 wagons, 3,500 mules, and nearly 
15,000 oxen were needed for the transport 
and subsistence of even this little army 
on its desert march. 

Leaving Fort Leavenworth late in June, 
Kearny's men swung down the Santa Fe 
139 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

trail at an average pace of nearly twenty 
miles a day. They crossed into Mexican 
territory at the trading-post of Bent's 
Fort on the Arkansas River, on August 2, 
and ten days later the Army of the West 
made its unopposed entry into Santa Fe. 
Armijo, the Mexican governor, who had 
assembled a force at Apache Caiion, lost 
heart as the Americans approached and 
fled into Mexico. 

An officer of Kearny's dragoons made 
the following professional comment on this 
expedition : 

"The 'Army of the West' marched from 
Bent's Fort with only rations calculated 
to last, by uninterrupted and most rapid 
marches, until it should arrive at Santa 
Fe. Is this War ? Tested by the rules 
of the science, this expedition is anoma- 
lous, not to say quixotic. A colonel's com- 
mand, called an army, marches eight 
hundred miles beyond its base, its com- 
munications liable to be cut off by the 
slightest effort of the enemy — mostly 
through a desert — the whole distance al- 
most totally destitute of resources, to 
conquer a territory of two hundred and 
140 



NEW MEXICO AND CHIHUAHUA 

fifty thousand square miles. . . . This 
is the art of war as practised in Amer- 
ica. * 

Hoisting the stars and stripes over the 
old adobe "palace" of the Spanish gover- 
nors, General Kearny formally annexed 
"The Territory of New Mexico in the 
United States," had an ''Organic Law" 
for its government struck off on an anti- 
quated Spanish printing-press, and, in 
September, departed with his dragoons 
for California, leaving Doniphan in pos- 
session of Santa Fe. 

The Second Missouri Volunteers arrived 
presently under Colonel Sterling Price, 
who was made civil governor of New 
Mexico. Early in 1847 there was a formi- 
dable uprising of Indians and Mexicans, 
promptly and vigorously put down by 
Price. Within a fortnight and with less 
than 400 men, he defeated the insurgents 
at La Canada, where Price was wounded, 
and at El Embrido, stormed their forti- 
fied position at Taos and forced them to 
surrender their leaders, whom he tried and 
hanged. From that day to this, there has 

* Cooke's *' Conquest of New Mexico and California." 
141 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

been no more loyal and patriotic part of 
the United States than New Mexico. 

In the meanwhile, from September to 
December, 1846, Doniphan had gone by 
General Kearny's orders into the country 
of the Navajo and Zuni Indians, where 
he had shown great firmness and diplo- 
macy in making these tribes stop fighting 
with each other and raiding into New 
Mexico, as they had done for centuries, 
release the prisoners and property they 
had taken from the whites, and enter into 
a treaty with the United States. 

This done, Doniphan's orders read that 
he was to '^proceed to report with his 
regiment to Brigadier-General Wool," who 
was supposed to be at, or approaching, 
the city of Chihuahua, five hundred and 
fifty miles distant through the enemy's 
country. 

Doniphan rode out of Santa Fe on De- 
cember 14, 1846, at the head of 856 mounted 
riflemen, followed by a long train of canvas- 
topped wagons. Suffering terribly from 
cold and thirst on the ninety-mile stretch 
through the desert of the Jornada del 
Muerto, the advance-guard, 500 strong, 
142 



NEW MEXICO AND CHIHUAHUA 

reached Brazito, or the "Little Arm" of 
the Rio Grande, about twenty-five miles 
from El Paso, now called Ciudad Juarez. 
(The present city of El Paso on the Amer- 
ican side of the river was not then in 
existence.) 

Christmas Day found the 500 Missou- 
rians taking life very easy at Brazito. The 
men were scattered far and near, looking 
for forage and fire-wood, while Doniphan 
and his officers were playing a game of 
"three-trick loo" for a fine Mexican horse 
they had captured that morning, when a 
cloud of dust betrayed the approach of a 
Mexican army. 

"Then we must stop the game long 
enough to whip the Mexicans," said Doni- 
phan, laying down his cards. "But re- 
member that I am away ahead in the 
score and cannot be beaten, and we'll 
play it out as soon as the battle is over." 

But in the confusion of the fight, the 
horse was lost, and the game was never 
finished.* 

The Mexicans advanced 1,300 strong, 
500 regular dragoons from Vera Cruz 

* Connelley's "Doniphan's Expedition," p. 371. 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

and 800 volunteers, both horse and foot, 
from El Paso and Chihuahua with a 
howitzer. Outflanking the Americans at 
both ends of the line, the Mexicans sent 
forward an officer carrying a black flag 
inscribed "Libertad 6 Muerto," and painted 
pirate-wise with a skull and cross-bones, 
who announced that no quarter would be 
given. 

The fight began with a charge against 
the American left of the Vera Cruz dra- 
goons, in all their glory of "blue panta- 
loons, green coats trimmed with scarlet, 
and tall caps plated in front with brass, 
on the top of which fantastically waved 
a plume of horsehair or bufi^alo's tail." * 
But these gorgeous horsemen could not face 
the heavy rifle-fire, and 17 mounted Mis- 
sourians chased them ignominiously from 
the field. The Chihuahua militia attacked 
the American right, which lay down and 
waited till the Mexicans were within sixty 
paces, then poured in a single volley that 
sent the survivors flying. Forty-three 
Mexicans were killed, 150 wounded, and 
5 prisoners and the howitzer were captured 

* Hughes's "Doniphan's March," p. 370. 
144 



NEW MEXICO AND CHIHUAHUA 

in this skirmish, in which only 7 Americans 
were injured. 

Ei Paso was occupied three days later, 
and Doniphan remained there for six weeks, 
till his artillery came up. The Missourians 
marched out of EI Paso on February 8, 
1847, 924 strong, with a six-gun battery 
and their own wagon-train, besides 315 
other wagons belonging to American traders 
wishing to do business in Chihuahua. For 
twenty days this caravan-army continued 
its way unopposed, now crossing deserts 
where the troopers held their swords in 
their hands, that they might carry water 
in the scabbards, now fighting a prairie fire 
by cutting down the tall grass from around 
the camp with their sabres. 

Unaided by their national government, 
the citizens of Chihuahua had succeeded in 
raising and equipping an army of their 
own of at least 2,000 men. "It was a 
division small indeed in numbers, but per- 
fectly well armed. . . . The good Chi- 
huahuans looked with pride upon the result 
of their labors, and in every piece of artil- 
lery, every musket, in every object which 
presented itself to their sight, they recog- 
145 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

nized the fruit of their personal exertions. 
. . . All had been created by them, all 
was new, all was brilliant. . . . The en- 
emy were to appear on the following day, 
according to the news received of their ap- 
proach, and that night was a festival in the 
camp. In every tent, in every family 
group, cheerful toasts were drunk to the 
liberty of the fatherland, the young men 
abandoning themselves to the illusive de- 
lirium of expected triumph, and thinking 
more of their expedition to New Mexico to 
assist their brethren to cast off the Amer- 
ican yoke than of the approaching en- 
counter, which they looked upon as less 
important than it was." * 

Eighteen miles north of Chihuahua town 
the road from El Paso ran over the lowest 
and narrowest part of a dumb-bell-shaped 
ridge, beyond which lay the dry bed of the 
Rio Sacramento. There the Mexicans lined 
the east side of the pass with tier above tier 
of batteries and intrenchments, apparently 
expecting that the Americans would file 
tamely into the gulch to be shot down. But 
Doniphan knew a trick worth two of that. 

* "Noticias por la Guerra," pp. 168-173. 
146 



NEW MEXICO AND CHIHUAHUA 

Except for the 200 horsemen riding in 
advance, nothing was to be seen of the 
American army as it approached but wagons 
— a great wagon-train nearly a quarter of 
a mile long and five vehicles abreast. 
Hidden in the centre, with two "prairie- 
schooners" on either side of each gun, 
trundled the field-battery, while between 
the outer files of wagons rode the mounted 
infantry. Instead of entering the pass, the 
column swung to the right and trotted to 
the western end of the ridge, where a steep 
but practicable slope led to the plateau 
above. Up this slope dashed the American 
battery, and went into action on the pla- 
teau, supported by the 200 cavalrymen, 
while the mounted infantry left their horses 
and deployed to left and right of the guns. 
The horses and wagons were left in the rear, 
guarded by two companies of armed team- 
sters. 

A thousand Mexican lancers with four 
guns dashed forward along the top of the 
plateau, but recoiled before the deadly fire 
poured into them, and retreated behind the 
intrenchments in great disorder. At this 
the exultant Missourians, horse, foot, and 
147 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

guns, charged irresistibly across the deep 
ravine and over the Mexican lines. The 
Chihuahuan amateur soldiery, firing ex- 
citedly from the hip, were shot or knocked 
on the head by hundreds, their sixteen can- 
non, their entire camp equipment, and even 
the saddle-mules and carriages of the prom- 
inent citizens who had ridden out to watch 
the repulse of the invaders, all fell into the 
hands of the Americans — only i of whom 
had been killed and 8 wounded. 

Doniphan took peaceful possession of 
Chihuahua on the following day, March i, 
and released a number of American citi- 
zens found in prison there. The American 
traders who had accompanied the army 
now unpacked their wagons and opened a 
fair. After occupying the city for two 
months, Doniphan got in touch with Gen- 
eral Wool at Saltillo, more than six hundred 
miles away, and presently joined him there, 
after a rapid and unresisted march through 
the states of Durango and Coahuila. The 
First Missouri Mounted Volunteers were 
reviewed on the battle-field of Buena Vista 
by General Wool on May 22, and then, as 
their year of service was nearly expired, 
148 



NEW MEXICO AND CHIHUAHUA 

they were sent from Saltillo to the mouth 
of the Rio Grande and thence by sea to 
New Orleans and up the Mississippi to 
their homes. 

Doniphan's march was enthusiastically 
likened by William Cullen Bryant to Xeno- 
phon's Anabasis. The 10,000 Greeks had 
marched through 3,450 miles of hostile 
country in fifteen months; the 1,000 Mis- 
sourians had covered 3,500 miles in thir- 
teen months by land, besides 2,500 miles 
by water. Each had demonstrated the 
weakness of the country they had marched 
through so easily, and the apathy of Its 
population. Like the Persian peasantry, 
the great bulk of the Mexican people were 
weary of wars and cared little who ruled 
them. After the organized Mexican forces 
were defeated and dispersed, there was very 
little of the guerilla warfare that had been 
so much dreaded by the Americans when 
hostilities began. 



149 



CHAPTER XI 
VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

W INFIELD SCOTT and Zachary 
Taylor were both natives of north- 
ern Virginia, brave and efficient general 
officers in the United States army, and 
Whigs; but there the resemblance ceased. 
Scott was a college graduate, a polished 
and widely travelled man of the world, and 
military pomp and circumstance were as 
dear to him as they were hateful to "Old 
Rough and Ready." As huge and hand- 
some as Porthos, Scott took the same child- 
ish delight in dressing himself up In the 
fullest of full-dress uniforms as did that 
immortal musketeer. But for all his van- 
ity and his ludicrous lack of a sense of 
humor that set the entire country to chuck- 
ling over his famous "hasty plate of soup," 
Scott was a master of his profession. In 
the War of 1 8 12 he had organized the best- 
drilled body of troops on our side of the 
Niagara frontier and led them to victory at 
150 



VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

the battle of Chippewa, and had had his 
left shoulder "pierced by a British musket- 
bair' at Lundy's Lane. Brave though he 
was on the battle-field, Scott was even better 
at planning a siege or a campaign, and he 
spent many weary weeks perfecting the 
details of the descent on Vera Cruz. 

Twelve thousand regulars and volun- 
teers, drawn from Taylor's army or sent 
from various Gulf and Atlantic ports, were 
gradually assembled at Lobos Island, a 
good harbor long used by English smugglers, 
within three days' sail of Vera Cruz. The 
great fleet of white-sailed transports ap- 
peared off the city on March 5, and were 
piloted by officers of the blockading squad- 
ron to the anchorage of Anton Lizardo, 
twelve miles down the coast. Nearer the 
city and only a mile offshore lies the deso- 
late island of Sacrificios, so called because 
Juan de Grijalva found traces of human 
sacrifice there in 1518. The beach opposite 
this island was the place Scott picked to 
land his men. 

As there was not enough room between 
Sacrificios and the shore for all the trans- 
ports, the troops were transferred to the 
151 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

decks of the war-ships, at the anchorage 
off Anton Lizardo, from dawn to noon on 
the 9th of March, 1847. The squadron 
then crossed over and anchored off the 
landing-place. Worth's division of regu- 
lars, 4,500 strong, with two field-batteries 
and a detachment of marines, embarked 
in sixty-five large whale-boats that had 
been specially built for this purpose by 
Scott's orders, and were manned by naval 
bluejackets. Forming in line of battle, 
with the regimental colors flying in the 
brilliant sunlight from the leading boat of 
each regiment, the bands playing and 
the soldiers and seamen cheering from the 
fleet, the whale-boats dashed for the shore, 
while the distant guns roared harmlessly 
from the city wall, and the "mosquito 
flotilla" shelled the sand-hills beyond the 
beach, where Scott fully expected to find 
Santa Anna and his entire army lurking 
in ambush. 

"On coming to within a hundred yards 
of the shore, the boats grounded on a small 
sand-bar. The officers and men imme- 
diately leaped into the water, the latter 
carrying their muskets on their shoulders 
152 



VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

and holding their cartridge-boxes well up, 
as the water reached to their hips when 
wading ashore. As the boats successively 
arrived the men were formed on the beach, 
the boats making all expedition back to 
the vessels for more men. All of the first 
party having formed into line, several 
regimental colors were displayed, and a 
charge made to the heights in front, but 
not a single Mexican was to be seen. 
The American flag was immediately planted 
amidst loud and prolonged cheers, which 
were enthusiastically echoed by the troops 
on board." * 

This was at sunset; by ten o'clock that 
night 10,000 men, with two field-batteries 
and two days' rations for all, had been 
placed safely on shore, within the space 
of four hours, without any mishap or the 
loss of a single life. Scott's elaborate 
plans, aided by the cordial co-operation of 
the navy, had worked out perfectly. Ad- 
ditional men, horses, and supplies were 
landed on the same spot thereafter, as 
fast as the weather allowed. 

Worth's division, followed by Patter- 

* Ballentinc, p, 299. 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

son's volunteers and a second division of 
regulars under Twiggs, marched into posi- 
tion and went into camp, together form- 
ing a soHd semicircle that completely in- 
vested the landward side of Vera Cruz. 
The fortifications before them, '^consisted 
of a series of small bastions and redans, 
solidly built and capable of mounting 
from eight to ten guns each. The cur- 
tains by which they were connected con- 
sisted of a thin wall, proof only against 
musketry and of but little use. None of 
the defenses were protected by ditches, 
as the shifting sands which surrounded 
the city on all sides would have filled any 
ditch in the event of a heavy gale." * 

Trenches were dug and four batteries 
established, under the direction of Colonel 
Totten of the engineering corps, who two 
years later was to begin the construction 
of the Panama Railroad. The first shovel- 
ful of earth was dug by Captain Robert 
Anderson, afterward commander of Fort 
Sumter. A formal demand for the sur- 
render of the city and castle having been 
made on March 22, and refused by the 

* Rives, II, 384. 
IS4 



VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

commander, General Juan Morales, Scott 
decided to conduct a regular siege, begin- 
ning with a bombardment. 

But the army's siege-train was still at 
sea, and though the light field-pieces and 
mortars that were brought to bear dropped 
shells in every part of the city and caused 
intense suffering among the peaceful in- 
habitants, the walls were not breached 
and the garrison, sheltered in their case- 
mates, were undismayed. Three eight-inch 
Paixhan guns, firing sixty-eight pound 
shells, and three long thirty-two-pounders 
were accordingly brought ashore from the 
steam-frigate Mississippi. Dragged for a 
mile through loose sand, set up and served 
by successive details of seamen, this naval 
battery soon silenced or smashed every- 
thing before it. Except for this landing 
party and a brief bombardment of the 
. Castle of San Juan de Ulloa by the two 
tiny steamers and four schooners of the 
''mosquito flotilla," the navy took no 
active part in the siege of Vera Cruz. 
The sturdy frigates and steamers of the 
blockading fleet, some of which after- 
ward fought their way up the Mississippi 
155 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

under Farragut, were kept carefully out 
of range of the one hundred and thirty- 
five guns of San Juan de Ulloa, which was 
then considered capable of sinking the 
entire American navy. For precisely op- 
posite reasons, not a shot was fired at the 
ancient fortress prison by our battleships 
when the United States forces took Vera 
Cruz for the second time, in 1914, San 
Juan de Ulloa being then too weak, as it 
had once been too strong, to attack. 

At the end of four days' bombardment 
the walls were breached and plans made 
for an assault, when General Landero, the 
new commander of the city, made over- 
tures for surrender. (Morales, who had 
turned over the command to his subor- 
dinate when he saw further resistance was 
hopeless, succeeded in making his escape in 
a small boat.) 

Terms were quickly agreed on and the 
garrison marched out with all the honors 
of war, stacked and surrendered their 
arms, and departed into the interior, on 
parole not to serve again in the war until 
duly exchanged. The citizens of Vera 
Cruz were guaranteed protection of their 
156 



VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

property and freedom of religious worship. 
Scott's army made its formal entry into 
the city on the following day, March 29; 
the port was immediately reopened, and a 
period of great activity and prosperity 
began. 

The defense of Vera Cruz was marked 
by the same inept passivity as that of 
Monterey. The large force of Mexican 
lancers in the neighborhood made only 
two attempts to molest the besieging army, 
and were each time easily driven off by 
the regular dragoons and volunteer cav- 
alry. 

The loss of life on both sides — 19 Amer- 
icans and about 400 Mexicans, during the 
siege of Vera Cruz in 1847 — was almost 
exactly duplicated at the second taking of 
the city by the Americans, sixty-seven 
years later. But while Funston's brigade 
could live for seven months in Vera Cruz 
at the hottest season of the year, without 
endangering their health and efficiency, 
Scott had to hurry his army away from 
the coast and into the interior, or see his 
men perish of yellow fever. Though the 
raging *' northers" swept day after day 
157 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

into the open roadstead, swamping the 
whale-boats and wrecking transports and 
store-ships, the work of unloading went 
on apace, for far more terrible than the 
northers, whose season was now nearly 
at its end, was the yellow fever that in- 
variably appeared as soon as they ceased 
to blow. 

Enough mules, wagons, and supplies were 
at last landed to permit General Twiggs to 
march out at the head of his division of 
regulars on April 8, followed next day by 
General Patterson with two of his three 
brigades of volunteers. Having crossed 
the Tierra Caliente or "Hot Country" 
of the coastal plain in three days' forced 
march, Twiggs reached the beginning of 
the rise to the central plateau at Plan 
del Rio, and came in touch there with the 
cavalry outposts of a Mexican army under 
.| Santa Anna. 

After the debacle of the Buena Vista 
campaign, Santa Anna had succeeded in 
organizing a force of 5,650 men out of the 
wreckage of his army at San Luis Potosi. 
He had then hastened back to Mexico 
City, which was in a state of civil war 
158 



VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

over the attempt of Farias, the hberal and 
anti-clerical vice-president, to force the 
CathoHc Church to contribute some of 
its immense wealth to the defense of the 
country. Throughout the war the church 
behaved in the most selfish and unpatriotic 
manner, but Santa Anna dared not antag- 
onize its mighty power. Instead, he had 
his congress repeal Farias's law for the 
secularization of part of the church prop- 
erty, and pass an act that in effect deposed 
the vice-president from office. Having 
settled these political difficulties, Santa 
Anna left the capital on April 2, to meet 
the invading army under Scott. 

The defile at La Joya, about ten miles 
west of the city of Jalapa, was where Santa 
Anna first intended to make his stand, but 
he soon abandoned it in favor of the pass 
of Cerro Gordo, thirty miles nearer the 
coast, and not far from Plan del Rio. 

At Plan del Rio the road from Vera Cruz 
crossed a stone bridge over the swift-run- 
ning Rio del Plan, curved in a big semi- 
circle through broken and hilly country, 
and came back to the river at Cerro Gordo. 
There the road ran through a narrow pass, 
159 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

with the river flowing through a deep, 
steep-walled ravine on the left, and on the 
right the cone-shaped height of Cerro 
Gordo, which dominated all the surround- 
ing country. On top of this hill, Santa Anna 
placed a six-gun battery in front of and at 
the centre of his line, which extended 
through the pass with its rear resting on 
the unfordable river, and its right wing 
protected by powerful batteries that swept 
the road and the ground between it and 
the river as the highway approached the 
pass from Plan del Rio. Santa Anna, who 
should have known the ground well, as 
Cerro Gordo lay between his two country 
estates of El Encerro and Manga de Clavo, 
declared that no other line of attack was 
possible, and that the hills in front of his 
centre and left wing were so rough that 
not even a rabbit could get through them. 
He also refused to fortify the Atalaya 
Hill* that stood close to Cerro Gordo on the 
side away from the river, but was lower 
than the latter. He confidently expected 

*This is the hill usually referred to in American histories as 
"El Telegrafo," but that name was given by the Mexicans to 
Cerro Gordo itself, from the semaphore that had formerly stood 
there. 

1 60 



VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

that the Americans would run their heads 
against his almost impregnable right wing. 

General Twiggs, after reconnoitring for 
two days, prepared to make a direct frontal 
attack with his division alone, but fortu- 
nately General Patterson, his superior in 
rank, came up in time to countermand it 
and order a halt till the arrival of General 
Scott. A careful reconnoissance was then 
made by two young officers of the engineer- 
ing corps. Lieutenant Beauregard and Cap- 
tain Robert E. Lee, who presently found a 
way through the ''rabbit-proof country," 
whereby the Mexican position could be 
turned. 

Twiggs's division of regulars and Shields's 
brigade of volunteers marched out accord- 
ingly before daybreak on Sunday, April i8, 
''over chasms where the walls were so 
steep the men could barely climb them. 
. . . The engineers, who had directed the 
opening, led the way and the troops fol- 
lowed. Artillery was let down the steep 
slopes by hand, the men engaged attaching 
a strong rope to the rear axle and letting the 
guns down a piece at a time, while the men 
at the rope kept their ground at the top, 
i6i 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

paying out gradually, while a few at the 
front directed the course of the piece. In 
like manner the guns were drawn up by 
hand the opposite slopes/'* 

Atalaya Hill was reached and stormed at 
two o'clock in the afternoon, the Americans 
driving the Mexican outpost from the crest 
with small loss, but suffering severely as 
they pursued the fugitives down the far- 
ther slope, swept by the battery on Cerro 
Gordo. The column halted for the rest of 
that day and the following night, when 
Captain Lee directed the bringing up and 
placing of a twenty-four pound gun and two 
howitzers, with great labor and under cover 
of darkness, on the summit of Atalaya. At 
the same time an eight-inch howitzer was 
being mounted by Scott's direction on the 
heights across the river. At the sound of 
Twiggs's guns on Atalaya at dawn Pillow's 
brigade of volunteers were to make a direct 
frontal attack on the strong batteries on 
the Mexican right, and clear the pass for 
the cavalry and field-battery that were to 
dash forward in pursuit as soon as the Mex- 
icans began their retreat. 

* Grant, "Memoirs," I, 132. 
162 



VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

At the break of day a picked brigade of 
Twiggs's regulars, with shells and "war 
rockets'" screaming over their heads from 
the battery on the crest, dashed down the 
slope of Atalaya Hill, up Cerro Gordo, and 
over the Mexican breastworks. As the de- 
fenders broke and fled, the Americans 
turned their own guns on them and the 
troops drawn up in the pass below. At the 
same time Shields's brigade of volunteers 
charged the extreme Mexican left. There 
Santa Anna and all his cavalry were sta- 
tioned with a battery, but rather than be 
captured or driven into the river, they left 
the guns and fled up the road to Jalapa. 

Pillow's brigade, guided by Lieutenant 
George B. McClellan of the engineers, had 
dashed gallantly forward against the bat- 
teries on the Mexican right, but the volun- 
teers encountered such difiicult ground and 
so deadly a fire that they fell back with 
considerable loss. General Pillow himself 
being badly wounded. But when the 
force holding those batteries realized that 
Twiggs had seized the pass in their rear and 
cut off^ their retreat, they hoisted the white 
flag and surrendered. Twiggs then started 
163 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

up the road in pursuit of the others, as did 
the cavalry and field-battery detailed for 
the purpose as soon as the road was cleared. 
But Santa Anna had had too long a start. 

All that had escaped of the Mexican army 
was widely dispersed and utterly demoral- 
ized. Its artillery, ammunition, camp, and 
entire equipment had fallen into the hands 
of the Americans, and 3,000 officers and 
men, including 5 generals, were prisoners 
of war. Like the garrison of Vera Cruz, 
these prisoners were released on parole, 
because of the difficulty of guarding them 
and also because Scott expected that such 
leniency would "diminish the resistance of 
other garrisons in our march." 

"I am also somewhat embarrassed," said 
Scott, in his report to the Secretary of War, 
*'with the pieces of artillery — all bronze — 
that we have captured. It would take a 
brigade and half the mules of this army to 
transport them fifty miles. A field-battery 
I shall take for service with the army, but 
the heavy metal must be collected and left 
here for the present. We have our own 
siege-train, and the proper carriages with 



us." 



164 



VERA CRUZ AND CERRO GORDO 

Counting Worth's division, which did not 
get into the fight, there had been about 
9,000 Americans to drive 8,000 Mexicans 
out of Cerro Gordo. How many of Santa 
Anna's men were killed and wounded can 
only be conjectured; Scott's army lost 263 
killed and 368 wounded. 

Jalapa was occupied without resistance 
the day after the battle. From there Scott 
sent forward Worth with his division of 
regulars and three volunteer regiments 
under Quitman. Leaving one of the latter 
to garrison the Castle of Perote, a famous 
old Spanish fortress that he found aban- 
doned on April 22, Worth pushed on over the 
mountains, easily brushed aside 2,000 or 
3,000 Mexican cavalrymen under Santa 
Anna at Amazoc on May 15, and three 
days later made a triumphant and unre- 
sisted entry into Puebla, the second city of 
the Mexican Republic. 

"The singular appearance of some of the 
soldiers," says a Mexican historian, "their 
wagons, their artillery, their large horses, 
all attracted the curiosity of the multitude, 
and at the corners and squares an immense 
crowd surrounded the new Conquistadores. 
165 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

The latter, extremely fatigued, confiding In 
the mutual guarantees exchanged between 
the city government and General Worth, 
or perhaps despising a people who so easily 
permitted the occupation of their terri- 
tory, stacked arms and bivouacked In the 
plaza. . . . There is no doubt that more 
than 10,000 persons were gathered in the 
plaza and the surrounding streets. One 
cry, one effort, the heart of one determined 
man would have sufficed. If once this 
multitude had pressed in upon the enemy 
they would inevitably have perished. Noth- 
ing was done. . . ."* 

* "Noticias," p. 227. 



166 



CHAPTER XII 
FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

NEGOTIATIONS for peace kept the 
American army from advancing be- 
yond Puebla for nearly three months after 
Worth's bivouac in the plaza. Hoping 
that the recent victories would induce the 
Mexicans to treat for the conclusion of the 
war that threatened his own political de- 
struction, Polk sent Mr. Nicholas Trist, 
chief clerk of the State Department, as a 
special commissioner to abide at Scott's 
headquarters with authority to make and 
sign a treaty with Santa Anna's govern- 
ment. 

Though he immediately got into a furious 
quarrel with Scott, who had diplomatic 
ambitions of his own and was enraged at the 
thought of yielding up any of his authority 
to a civilian, Trist soon made a firm friend 
of the general, and got in touch with the 
Mexican Government through the medium 
of the British minister. But neither Santa 
167 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

Anna nor his congress dared incur the wrath 
of the Mexican people by surrendering New 
Mexico and CaHfornia as the price of peace. 
If they did so, a domestic revolution was 
certain, while the repulse of Scott's army 
was possible, particularly as the delay had 
given the Mexicans time to organize the 
defense of their capital. 

But the delay had also helped the in- 
vaders. All seven of Scott's volunteer 
regiments had been sent home in June at 
the expiration of their year's enlistment, 
and it took time to replace them with vol- 
unteers of a later levy. Ten new regiments 
of infantry had been added to the regular 
army for the rest of the war, and these 
were sent south as fast as they could be 
raised and organized. Yellow fever raged 
at Vera Cruz, and though the arriving 
troops were marched as fast as possible into 
the cool and healthy hill-country, yet there 
were more than 3,000 sick in the various 
hospitals by the end of June. Even worse 
than "Yellow Jack" was dysentery, caused 
by "excessive indulgence in fruits, which it 
was found impossible to keep from the 
troops." But the general health of the 
168 



FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

army, in the delightful climate of Puebla, 
was excellent. Between drills the soldiers 
mingled amicably with the townspeople, 
who even to-day remember the army that 
actually paid cash for supplies instead of 
seizing them. 

Yet, in spite of this liberal policy, Scott 
wrote to the Secretary of War: 

''Our difficulties lie in gathering subsis- 
tence from a country covered with exas- 
perated guerillas and banditti, and main- 
taining with inadequate garrisons and 
escorts communications with the rear." 

For the latter reason, though he himself 
had not feared to ride from Jalapa to 
Puebla far in advance of the main body of 
his army and with an escort of only 250 
dragoons, Scott decided to cut the long 
cord that bound him to his base at Vera 
Cruz and advance like Cortez after burning 
his ships. When the news of this decision 
reached London, the aged Duke of Welling- 
ton, who had been following the campaign 
with great interest, shook his head gravely 
and gave Scott up for lost. 

Leaving a garrison of 393 Pennsylvania 
volunteers under Colonel Childs of the 
169 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO* 

regular army to guard the i,8oo American 
sick in the hospitals and hold a city of 
80,000 Mexicans, Scott led out his army on 
August 7 on the road to the city of Mexico. 
He had in all 10,738 officers and men, or- 
ganized in four divisions of infantry, com- 
manded respectively by Generals Worth, 
Twiggs, Pillow, and Quitman, and an inde- 
pendent brigade of dragoons under Colonel 
Harney. With this force, Scott confidently 
advanced to attack a city of 200,000 in- 
habitants, defended by an army that was 
twice, and that he supposed to be fully 
three times, as numerous as his own. 

Marching unresisted through deep de- 
files where 100 men could have stopped 
an army, the long blue columns climbed 
higher and higher till they passed the great 
snow-covered peak of Iztaccihuatl, and 
came, on the morning of the third day, to 
the summit of the pass, more than ten 
thousand feet above the level of the sea. 
Before and below them lay the valley of 
Mexico, beyond a semicircular chain of 
lakes lay the capital city. 

"The direct road from Puebla, winding 
down from the mountain heights near the 
170 



FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

conspicuous and snow-covered mass of 
Iztaccihuatl, passed along the northeasterly 
shore of Lake Chalco, the southernmost of 
the chain of lakes, and then upon an ancient 
causeway over the isthmus lying between 
Lakes Xochimilco and Texcoco. On this 
isthmus a rocky hill known as the Peiion 
Viejo was made strong by every device of 
the engineering art. The direct access to 
the city was thus controlled by what was 
believed to be an impregnable position, and 
the isthmus was further strengthened by 
strong works thrown up in the neighboring 
village of Mexicalcingo." * 

At the sound of a signal-gun announcing 
the approach of Scott's army on the after- 
noon of August 9 thousands of enthusiastic 
volunteers, accompanied by bands playing 
patriotic airs, clergy invoking blessings, and 
a great part of the population of the capital 
poured out from the city to the Penon to 
help repulse the invader. But Scott was 
not the sort of general to order an impetu- 
ous frontal attack on the carefully prepared 
trenches and batteries before him. Halt- 
ing at Ayotla, in front of the Peiion, he 

* Rives, II, 453. 
171 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

spent the next two days reconnoitring the 
ground, and had almost decided to turn 
Santa Anna's right by an attack on Mex- 
icalcingo when Colonel Duncan, an artil- 
lery officer of Worth's division, discovered 
a practicable path round the southern end 
of Lake Chalco, between the marshy shore 
of the lake and the steep slope of the hills 
at the southern end of the valley. 

Marching by this route, the American 
army came on August i6 to the village of 
San Augustin, on the road from the Pacific 
port of Acapulco to Mexico City. But be- 
tween San Augustin and the capital the 
Acapulco road passed first by the great 
hacienda of San Antonio and then through 
the hamlet and over the bridge of Churu- 
busco, both strongly built places held by 
large forces of Mexicans. A direct advance 
over the mile of open road northward from 
San Augustin to the castle-like buildings of 
San Antonio would have cost many lives. 
Again a turning movement had to be made, 
though the swampy fields to the east of the 
road were too soft for the passage of ar- 
tillery, while to the west lay a great field of 
lava called the Pedregal. 
172 



FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

"I cannot better describe this Pedregal/' 
declared a young naval officer with Scott's 
army, "than by comparing it to a sea, which 
having been lashed into fury by a tempest, 
had been suddenly transformed by the wand 
of an enchanter into stone."* 

It was no easy task to move an army 
across this jagged mass of lava, but five 
miles of it had to be crossed to reach the 
next road to the north. This was a local 
highway running from the little village of 
Contreras through the town of San Angel 
to Mexico City, and following the ravine 
of the Magdalena Brook till that stream 
flowed into the Churubusco River. A 
mule path through the Pedregal from San 
Augustin to the Contreras road was dis- 
covered by Scott's engineers and widened 
to permit the passage of artillery by the 
labor of Pillow's division, which led the 
advance over it on the 19th. 

But when Worth's advance-guard came 
to the edge of the Pedregal they found the 
exit blocked by a strong force of Mexicans, 

* Raphael Semmes, "Service Afloat and Ashore," p. 393. He 
is best known to history as the captain of the Confederate com- 
merce-destroyer Alabama. 

173 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

intrenched on a hill on the other side of the 
Contreras road. This hill was near a ranch 
called Padierna, which the Americans con- 
fused with the village of Contreras, a mile 
farther south at the end of the road. Be- 
cause of this confusion the fight that fol- 
lowed is called by us the battle of Con- 
treras, but by the Mexicans the battle of 
Padierna. 

"War-rockets," mountain howitzers, and 
Magruder's field-battery — which had been 
armed with guns captured at Cerro Gordo 
and had "Stonewall" Jackson for its second 
lieutenant — ^were brought up by Worth and 
opened fire on the hill. But General Val- 
encia, who held that position with 4,000 
men of the Mexican "Army of the North," 
had twenty-two guns in position. His heavy 
cannon soon drove the American guns and 
skirmishers back into the Pedregal. " Noth- 
ing but their excessively bad firing," writes 
one of Magruder's gunners, "had saved our 
battery from being annihilated." 

General Valencia, elated with his suc- 
cess, reported a great victory and refused 
to obey the orders sent him by Santa 
Anna to fall back on the capital. That 
174 



FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

night while Valencia made merry in his 
tent, three brigades of United States reg- 
ulars, and one of volunteers were advanc- 
ing through the Pedregal to turn his left 
flank, "passing over volcanic rocks and 
across large fissures barely narrow enough 
for the men to get across by leaping." 
Men who cross that lava-field to-day 
find it no mean task for a trained athlete 
unburdened and in broad daylight to 
follow the trail those soldiers, encumbered 
with knapsack and flintlock, hurried over 
in pitchy darkness. Striking the Con- 
treras road higher up, they cut off Valen- 
cia from the city and caused Santa Anna, 
who was advancing with a brigade to his 
relief, to fall back to San Angel and leave 
Valencia, whom he distrusted and hated 
as an old political rival, to his fate. 

The four American brigades, commanded 
by General Persifer F. Smith, the senior 
brigadier, spent the night in and about 
the village of San Geronimo in a heavy 
downpour of rain. During this storm 
Captain Robert E. Lee made his way 
back across the Pedregal: "The greatest 
feat of physical and moral courage per- 
"^75 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

formed by any individual in my knowl- 
edge, pending the campaign," in the opin- 
ion of General Scott to whom Lee reported 
at San Augustin in time to arrange for a 
demonstration in Valencia's front to dis- 
tract his attention while Smith attacked 
his rear. 

At sunrise on Friday, August 20, 
Smith's, Riley's, and Cadwalader's brigades 
crept quietly up the ravines that led to 
the left and rear of Valencia's position, 
reloaded and primed their rain-soaked mus- 
kets, fixed bayonets, and charged. Two 
Mexican guns were hastily pointed and 
fired to the rear, there was a feeble sputter 
of musketry, and then the charge struck 
home. In exactly seventeen minutes the 
fight was over, and the utterly routed 
Mexicans were riding or running their 
fastest up the road to San Angel. 

''Thus/' reported Scott, "was the great 
victory at Contreras achieved; one road 
to the capital opened; 700 of the enemy 
killed; 813 prisoners, including among 88 
officers 4 generals; besides many colors 
and standards; 22 pieces of brass ordnance, 
half of large caliber; thousands of small 
176 



FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

arms and accoutrements; an immense 
quantity of shot, shells, powder, and car- 
tridges; 700 pack-mules, many horses, etc., 
etc. — all in our hands. " 

Among the captured cannon were the 
two brass six-pounders that had been lost 
by Lieutenant O'Brien of the Fourth Artil- 
lery at Buena Vista, and were retaken at 
Contreras by a company of the same regi- 
ment. 

Scott himself led Pillow's and Twiggs's 
divisions in pursuit of the flying Mexicans 
up the road from Contreras through San 
Angel and beyond. Swinging to the east, 
Scott quickly drove a small force of Mex- 
icans out of the ancient village of Coyoacan, 
where Cortez had first established the 
viceregal capital of New Spain. This was 
an important cross-roads, in the rear of 
San Antonio, from which post the Mexican 
garrison were retreating as fast as they 
could run, with Worth's division in close 
pursuit, up the Acapulco road to the 
bridge at Churubusco. 

A tete-de-pont, a strong earthwork mount- 
ing five guns and protected by a wet 
ditch filled waist-deep with river water, 
177 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

guarded the southern end of the bridge. 
A quarter of a mile to the southwest, 
toward Coyoacan, stands the picturesque 
Convent of San Mateo, built in 1678, and 
designed like all the Spanish-American 
ecclesiastical edifices of that period, for a 
fortress in time of need. Round it ran a 
thick stone wall twelve feet high, scaffolded 
within so that infantry might fire over the 
top, and protected without by an earth- 
work mounting six guns. The main strength 
of the convent garrison consisted of the 
crack Independencia and Bravo battalions 
of the National Guard, the flower of Mexico 
City, while the tete-de-pont was held by 
the Battalion of San Patricio, composed 
of deserters, most of whom were Irish 
Catholics from the American army. Across 
the bridge on the north bank of the shallow 
Churubusco River, which had been artifi- 
cially straightened into an irrigation ditch 
running due east and west, were drawn up 
dense masses of Mexican infantry in re- 
serve. 

The guns of the tete-de-pont, opening on 
the head of Worth's column, made that 
general deploy his division to the left and 
178 



FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

right of the road, but the heavy cross-fire 
from the convent forced his left wing back 
on the centre, till his whole force had with- 
drawn to the east of the Acapulco road. 
There, with their line curving concavely 
from the river on their right to the road 
on their left, Worth's regulars stood or 
advanced slowly for two hours through the 
swampy fields, suffering severely, though 
covered by the tall uncut corn, from the 
fire of the renegades in the iete-de-pont, 

Twiggs at the same time was advancing 
independently against the convent, also 
through corn-fields and under a withering 
fire. An artillery duel raged between the 
six Mexican guns at the convent and an 
American light battery. Shields's brigade 
of New York volunteers and the ** Pal- 
metto Regiment" of South Carolina, to- 
gether with a brigade of **new regulars," 
under Franklin Pierce, later President of 
the United States, forded the river and 
advanced east along its north bank. These 
raw volunteers and recruits, raked by a 
flanking fire from the convent, and faced 
by thousands of Mexicans under Santa 
Anna himself, were soon forced to halt 
179 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

but stood their ground sturdily. So three 
independent and bloody actions raged in 
and about Churubusco. 

At last the Mexican troops lining the 
north bank of the river began to retreat, 
while the defenders of the tete-de-pont and 
the convent ran out of ammunition. As 
their fire slackened, a mixed force of Worth's 
men waded across the river and began fir- 
ing into the rear of the tete-de-pont. At 
this, their comrades charged across the 
ditch and over the earthwork. The de- 
fenders were quickly killed, captured, or 
put to flight; the fugitives streaming over 
the bridge and mingling with the reserve 
troops north of the river in a disorderly 
retreat to the city. After them came 
Worth, Pierce, and Shields with their in- 
fantry, while Harney's dragoons charged 
up to the very guns of the San Antonio 
gate of Mexico City. 

"At this moment," says a Mexican his- 
torian, "a mounted American officer, in uni- 
form of blue, penetrated the low earthen 
rampart, sword in hand, dealing sabre 
blows and falling wounded on the es- 
planade. Many swords were drawn to 
i8o 



FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

kill him, but others also hastened to de- 
fend him on seeing him fall. He rose 
crippled, radiant with valor, and smiling 
at the felicity of being at the gates of the 
capital." * 

So did "Dashing Phil Kearny," then a 
captain in the First Dragoons, lose his arm, 
while Major Mills of the Pennsylvania in- 
fantry, who had joined the charge as a vol- 
unteer, was killed inside the gate itself. 

As Worth went over the tete-de-ponty 
Twiggs stormed the battery outside the 
convent wall. The church itself held out 
a little longer, but the defenders, when 
they saw they were surrounded and their 
own guns turned against them, displayed 
the white flag from the belfry. 

One hundred and four officers and 1,155 
men surrendered at the convent. All the 
American deserters captured at the bridge 
were either hung, or branded with a red- 
hot iron with the letter "D," in accor- 
dance with the brutal military code of the 
period. Curiously enough, a company of 
Mexican renegades fought at Churubusco 
on the American side. 

* "Noticias," p. 286. 
181 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

The two days' fighting that gained Scott 
the whole valley south of Mexico City cost 
his army 137 killed, 879 wounded, and 40 
missing — a total loss of 1,056, or more than 
a tenth of its total strength. The Mexican 
loss cannot be computed with any exact- 
ness, but counting the very many deser- 
tions, Santa Anna's army must have been 
reduced by at least 6,000 men, besides the 
guns and equipment captured. The moral 
havoc created by these two crushing de- 
feats was also very great, though somewhat 
offset by the gallant defense of Churubusco 
and the repulse of the pursuers at the San 
Antonio gate. 

Most military critics agree that Churu- 
busco was a needless battle. By menacing 
its rear and allowing the garrison time to 
retreat, Scott could have taken that place 
as he took San Antonio, without losing a 
man. But he had not expected to find 
Churubusco strongly held, and Scott's slow- 
working mind was better at planning a 
pitched battle than evading an unexpected 
obstacle in the field. 

Ordering his divisional commanders "to 
take up battering or assaulting positions," 
182 



FROM PUEBLA TO CHURUBUSCO 

Scott sat down in his headquarters at San 
Augustin to draw up a summons for the 
surrender of the city to be deHvered in the 
morning. 

''But/' wrote the war correspondent of 
the New Orleans Picayune, ''the darkness 
of night had hardly fallen on the 20th 
of August, and the smoke of Churubusco 
was still hanging lazily over the low and 
marshy grounds, when a coach containing 
a deputation from the English embassy 
came out of the city and approached 
Worth's pickets. ... As their mission was 
to General Scott, they were permitted to 
pass the outposts. It was now evident that 
Santa Anna, unable further to continue the 
defense with his army broken and dispirited, 
was disposed to open negotiations for an 
armistice."* 

♦George W. Kendall, "The War Between the United States 
and Mexico," illustrated, p. 35. 



183 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

AN armistice was promptly granted by 
, Scott, who wanted peace and the 
poHtical prestige it would bring him as 
ardently as Santa Anna desired a breathing 
space. Commissioners were appointed on 
each side to discuss terms. On the day they 
met, a week after Churubusco, some Amer- 
ican quartermaster's department wagons 
that had been permitted to enter the city 
for supplies were attacked by a mob, one 
of the unarmed teamsters killed and several 
others badly beaten. The Mexican Govern- 
ment apologized, however, and the nego- 
tiations continued, but without accomplish- 
ing anything. Santa Anna dared not bring 
on a revolution at home by yielding up the 
territory demanded by the Americans, and 
after a great deal of shilly-shallying the 
armistice was broken off on September 5. 
On the following day a rumor reached 
184 



THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

General Scott that the Mexicans were 
melting down their church-bells and cast- 
ing them into cannon at a foundry in the 
Molino del Rey. This "Mill of the King," 
where both flour and gunpowder had been 
made in colonial times, was a long range of 
massive stone buildings at the western end 
of the hill of Chapultepec. 

When the Aztec people first came to the 
valley of Anahuac, or Mexico, many cen- 
turies before Cortez, they made their first 
settlement, according to ancient legend, on 
Chapultepec, the "Hill of the Grasshop- 
pers." This hill is a long, narrow ridge of 
volcanic rock, rising steeply out of the flat, 
prehistoric lake bottom of the surrounding 
valley to a height of one hundred and ninety- 
five feet. This ridge is nearly half a mile 
long at the base, runs almost due east and 
west, and lies about three miles southwest 
from the National Palace on the great plaza 
of Mexico City. Precipitous on the north 
and east, Chapultepec slopes steeply down 
on the west, where from time immemorial 
has stood a noble grove of cypress-trees. 
The summit of the hill was levelled off into 
terraces and a palace built there by two 
i8; 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

successive Spanish viceroys, father and son, 
toward the end of the eighteenth century. 
The National Mihtary Academy has been 
housed there since its creation in 1833, the 
ill-fated Maximilian chose Chapultepec for 
his imperial palace, and to-day it is the 
official summer residence of the President 
of Mexico. 

The palace, or "Castle," of Chapultepec, 
as the Americans persisted in calling it, 
though it was and is no more like a fortress 
than any other large, substantial dwelling- 
house, faces to the south, and its main en- 
trance was reached in 1847 by a zigzag 
ramp or roadway running up the steep 
southern side of the hill. Below, high park 
walls surrounded the ridge on every side 
but the west, where the Molino del Rey 
completed the enclosure. 

Separated from the Molino and about 
five hundred yards west of its northern end 
was another old Spanish structure — a small, 
square building called the Casa Mata. 
This is Spanish for "casemate," but it is 
said the place had been built for a powder- 
mill. Surrounded by an earthwork and 
ditch, it was a formidable position to attack, 
186 



THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

but its strength was much concealed by a 
fold of the ground before it. 

General Worth was ordered by Scott on 
September 7 to drive away the large body 
of Mexican troops massed in or about the 
Molino, and capture and destroy the "can- 
non foundry." Reconnoitring carefully. 
Worth discovered the strength of the Mex- 
icans' left wing resting on the Molino, 
underestimated that of their right at the 
Casa Mata, and decided to pierce their 
centre between the two groups of build- 
ings. 

The Mexican line made two sides of a 
right-angled triangle, and Worth, under 
cover of darkness, formed his men on the 
third. A storming party of 500 picked offi- 
cers and men chosen from the two brigades 
of Worth's division were ready to charge 
the enemy's centre, covered by the fire of 
two field-batteries and a couple of twenty- 
four-pounders. Garland's brigade was on 
the right, Clarke's on the left, while Cad- 
walader's brigade of Pillow's division, whose 
assistance Worth had asked for, stood in 
reserve. Three hundred dragoons under 
Major Sumner sat in their saddles and 
187 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

wondered if they were there to charge stone 
walls. 

But only a mile to the west, at the haci- 
enda of Morales, were no less than 4,000 
Mexican lancers under General Alvarez, 
with orders to fall on the American rear 
and left flank as soon as they advanced to 
the attack. In the Molino were four bat- 
talions of the National Guard, two bat- 
talions of Mexican regulars held the Casa 
Mata, and six more battalions of regulars 
and a light battery had formed the centre 
under General Ramirez. But during the 
night of August 7, while Worth's men were 
forming to attack them, Santa Anna took 
away one of Ramirez's battalions and or- 
dered the rest to move over to the left in 
front of the Molino del Rey. 

At the first flush of the tropic dawn the 
American twenty-four-pounders began to 
shell the Molino, as the storming party 
dashed gallantly forward, routed Ramirez's 
men, and captured their battery. But the 
grape-shot and musket-balls poured into 
them from the buildings drove the stormers 
back. The triumphant Mexicans pursued 
them down the slope, retaking the cap- 
188 



THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

tured guns and butchering the American 
wounded. 

Garland's and Cadwalader's brigades 
now charged together and assaulted the 
Molino along its entire quarter mile of 
front. The garrison defended themselves 
like men and there was the savagest kind 
of hand-to-hand fighting. Finally the gates 
were burst in, the Americans poured into the 
buildings and cleared them with the bay- 
onet. The surviving Mexicans fled up the 
hill to Chapultepec, whose guns had kept 
up a constant but ineffective fire at long 
range throughout the fight. 

In the meanwhile Clarke's brigade, after 
a too-slight bombardment by Duncan's 
battery, had attempted to storm the Casa 
Mata, but had been driven back in confu- 
sion and with heavy loss. Nearly 40 per 
cent of one regiment, the Fifth United 
States Infantry, had been killed or wounded. 
General Alvarez and his cavalry division, 
outnumbering the total American force in 
the field, now had a golden opportunity to 
charge and ride down his broken and dis- 
ordered enemy. But Duncan's battery 
opened on him with canister, Sumner's 
189 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

300 dragoons trotted up, and Alvarez and 
his 4,000 tamely withdrew. 

Duncan's guns were turned again on the 
Casa Mata, which was now isolated by 
the fall of the Molino. Realizing this, 
the garrison slipped over the rear wall 
and got away over the fields to the north. 
The Americans were under strict orders 
not to pursue, though Worth had begged 
to be allowed to press on after taking the 
Molino del Rey and assault Chapultepec. 
''Had this victory been followed up 
promptly," wrote General Grant, who had 
been foremost in the fight, "no doubt 
Americans and Mexicans would have gone 
over the defenses of Chapultepec so near 
together that the place would have fallen 
into our hands without further loss." * 

Molino del Rey was a useless fight and 
a Pyrrhic victory. Neither cannon nor 
foundry were discovered there, though 
some old disused molds showed that there 
might once have been such an establish- 
ment in the mill. After the powder maga- 
zine had been blown up and the captured 
cannon removed, the buildings were aban- 

* "Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant," I, 152. 
190 



THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

doned. As at Churubusco, General Scott 
had thrown away his men's lives need- 
lessly, from his inabihty to judge accurately 
when he was forced to think quickly. 

Of the 3,447 American troops engaged, 
ii6 were killed, 653 wounded, and 18 
missing — a total loss of 787. At least nine 
or ten thousand fought on the Mexican 
side, and of these 685 were taken prisoners. 
Their infantry must have lost very many 
killed or wounded, and many more de- 
serted from the broken and disorganized 
battalions. The cavalry had kept care- 
fully out of harm's way. 

Having reoccupied the abandoned Mo- 
lino, Santa Anna proclaimed a great vic- 
tory, and had the church-bells ring peals 
of triumph. But unlike Buena Vista, 
this battle had been fought too near home 
to be lied about successfully, and the 
,demoralized garrison and terrified citizens 
waited gloomily for the next move of the 
besiegers. 

''The city of Mexico," says Mr. Rives, 

"was in no sense a fortified place. There 

were no walls about it. The so-called 

gates (garitas) were mere stations intended 

191 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

to be occupied by detachments of police 
or revenue officers; but, as they were gen- 
erally sohd stone buildings they could be 
made to serve for purposes of defense, 
and at most of them barricades and earth- 
works, mounting only a few light guns, 
had been hastily constructed. But the 
strength of these posts lay chiefly in the 
fact that they could only be approached 
by perfectly straight causeways running 
through marshy fields and flanked by 
broad ditches." * 

After carefully going over the ground 
and holding a council of war, Scott de- 
cided to make a demonstration against 
the southern gates, but to enter the city 
by the two causeways that ran from the 
eastern end of Chapultepec Hifl. Of these 
two, the Tacubaya causeway was the 
more southerly and led straight to the 
Belem Gate, while the other made a long 
angle to the north before entering the 
Gate of San Cosme. If his army was to 
follow these routes, it was necessary for 
Scott to capture not only the batteries 
that guarded the entrance to the cause- 

* Rives, II, 539. 
192 



THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

ways, but the hill and palace that towered 
above them. 

Therefore, the American siege guns and 
mortars were trained on Chapultepec, and 
bombarded the palace all day Sunday, 
September 12. The building itself, well- 
protected by sand-bags and timbering, 
was not much damaged, but the nerves of 
the garrison were badly shaken. Many of 
the Mexican soldiers there deserted that 
night. 

Sunrise on Monday the 13th, found 
Pillow's division in possession of the Mo- 
lino del Rey, ready to charge up the western 
slope of the hill, while another division 
under Quitman were waiting to storm the 
zigzag road leading up to the south front 
of the palace. The windows and flat- 
topped roof of that building were swarm- 
ing with Mexican infantry, while fourteen 
guns had been mounted on the terrace. 

At eight o'clock, the American batteries 
ceased firing, and by so doing gave the 
signal for the advance of the two divisions. 
Each was headed by a storming party of 
500 picked regulars, carrying crowbars, 
picks, and scaling ladders. 
193 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

General Pillow was struck down by a 
grape-shot, but his men rushed on, driv- 
ing the Mexican skirmishers before them 
through the cypress grove, and from be- 
hind an intrenchment half-way up the 
slope, so precipitately that the fugitives 
had no time to light the fuses of the 
mines that had been laid on the hillside. 
A moat, twelve feet wide and ten deep, 
checked the advance at the foot of the re- 
taining wall of the terrace. Under a heavy 
fire, the scaling ladders were brought up 
and used for bridges, then raised and 
placed against the wall. While their com- 
rades below picked off the Mexicans who 
lined the parapet, the foremost Americans, 
led by a private of the '^Voltiguers,'' or 
Tenth Infantry, swarmed up the ladders, 
fought their way over the ramparts, and 
cleared the terrace. 

On the south, the New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, and South Carolina volunteers from 
Quitman's division had breached the park 
wall with crowbars, and were scaling the 
terrace, or fighting their way up the zig- 
zag road, in spite of a four-pounder placed 
at the angle and the musketry fire from 
194 



THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

the palace windows and roof. Presently 
the Americans on the terrace were able 
to fire down on the rear of the batteries 
guarding the entrance to the Tacubaya 
road. These batteries were then charged 
and taken by Quitman's storming party and 
the battalion of marines. 

The palace itself was broken into and 
Its defenders, after savage fighting, were 
driven at the point of the bayonet from 
room after room and floor above floor, 
till the American flag waved triumphantly 
from the roof, and the surviving Mexicans 
threw down their arms. While resistance 
lasted, no quarter had been given, for 
many of the garrison were known to have 
been among the defenders of the Molino 
del Rey, and the memory of how their 
wounded comrades had been put to death 
there maddened the Americans. 

The young cadets of the National Mili- 
tary Academy joined bravely in the de- 
fense of their Alma Mater, the West Point 
of Mexico, and several of them were killed. 
A monument commemorates the valor of 
these boy-patriots, which has recently found 
a parallel in the desperate defense of the 
195 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

National Naval Academy at the taking of 
Vera Cruz by the Atlantic Fleet, April 
21, 19 14. An historical legend has nat- 
urally grown up about the former ex- 
ploit — as a similar legend may be expected 
to grow up about the latter — so that it 
is widely believed that Chapultepec was 
defended mainly by the cadets. But, as a 
matter of fact and record, there were 
more than 1,200 Mexican regulars and 
National Guardsmen in the garrison, and 
so few cadets — certainly less than 50 — 
that General Bravo, the commanding of- 
ficer, did not include them in his report of 
the strength of his forces, made the night 
before the assault. 

After the fall of Chapultepec, General 
Quitman advanced with his division and 
a number of other troops along the Tacu- 
baya causeway, while Worth, who had 
driven away a Mexican brigade from the 
north side of the ridge, pushed on along 
the other causeway, leading to the San 
Cosme Gate. 

"The causeways by which Worth's and 
Quitman's commands respectively advanced 
were wide and solid structures, well ele- 
196 



THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

vated above the level of the marshes they 
traversed. Down the middle of each ran 
an aqueduct, the city's water-supply, which 
rested upon open arches and massive pil- 
lars of masonry, and afforded, said Scott, 
^fine points of attack and defense/ The 
arches were, perhaps, of four or five feet 
span, and the columns four feet thick; so 
that, while affording some cover, the arches 
could not shelter many men at one 
time." * 

Quitman placed three South Carolina 
volunteers, with bayoneted muskets and 
three regulars from the "Rifles," whose 
otherwise superior weapons had no bay- 
onets, under each archway as the column 
advanced. Though the Mexicans holding 
the Belem garita defended their post bravely 
with cannon and musketry, they were 
picked off by the American rifles and their 
defenses battered by Quitman's field-guns, 
till they were forced to abandon the gate. 
But farther advance on Quitman's part 
was checked by the citadel with its fifteen 
guns, just within and to the north of the 
gate, and for the rest of that day and the 

,* Rives, II, 554. 
197 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

following night his men had enough to do 
to hold the ground already taken. 

Worth, in the meanwhile, had made his 
way along the San Cosme causeway under 
cover of the arches till he came to where 
the road was lined by houses on both sides. 
From that point he battered his way 
through the walls from house to house, ad- 
vancing under cover and turning the barri- 
cades as he had done at Monterey. Quick- 
witted Lieutenant Grant of the Fourth 
Infantry planted a mountain howitzer in 
a church belfry, from where it dropped shell 
after shell among the defenders of the San 
Cosme Gate. Soon the gate was won, and 
that night several heavy mortars and siege- 
guns were brought up and planted within 
the city itself. 

But at sunrise came delegations from the 
city government, bearing white flags and 
the news that Santa Anna and as much of 
his army as he could hold together had 
abandoned the city and were retreating to 
Guadalupe Hidalgo. Scott immediately 
demanded and received the surrender of the 
capital. 

A battalion of United States marines led 
198 



THE FALL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO 

the army Into the city of Mexico (as the 
marines have led it into so many other 
places before and since), drove a mob of 
looters out of the National Palace, and 
hoisted the stars and stripes. Then Gen- 
eral Winfield Scott, riding in full uniform 
at the head of his staff and escort, reined 
up his horse in the middle of the great plaza, 
and dramatically announced the comple- 
tion of the conquest of Mexico. 



199 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO 

STREET fighting began soon after Scott 
entered the National Palace. Though 
the Mexican army had withdrawn from the 
city, its generals had, like General Maas at 
Vera Cruz sixty-seven years later, released 
and armed all the convicts and left them to 
fight the Americans. Knives had been dis- 
tributed among the "leperos,'" or profes- 
sional beggars, with whom the capital 
swarmed, and these men, joined by de- 
serters from Santa Anna's army and mem- 
bers of the National Guard, began stoning 
and "sniping'' the American troops from 
windows and housetops. 

One of the first shots wounded Brigadier- 
General Garland as he rode at the head of 
Worth's division into the city. A twenty- 
four-pound shell from a siege-gun promptly 
demolished the house from which that 
musket-shot had been fired. Other houses 
200 



TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO 

held by *' snipers" were broken into and 
cleared with the bayonet. Many by- 
standers and non-combatants were killed 
during the thirty-six hours of street fighting 
that followed, but, deplorable as this was, it 
was unavoidable. Deducting the Chapul- 
tepec garrison and other detachments, Scott 
had but 6,000 men with which to subdue 
and hold a hostile city of 200,000 inhabi- 
tants. It was no time for half-way measures 
or the tame sort of fighting the Mexicans 
were wont to wage in their own capital, when 
two rival factions would carefully intrench 
themselves and fire harmlessly at each other 
for several weeks. The Americans fought 
in grim earnest, expecting at every minute 
the return of Santa Anna and his army. 

Hearing that the Americans were hard 
pressed, Santa Anna did return with a few 
troopers to Mexico City, but only to find 
Scott in complete control and the municipal 
authorities helping him restore order. Santa 
Anna accordingly rode back to Guadalupe 
Hidalgo, where he resigned the presidency 
and set out with the few thousand men re- 
maining to him to recapture Puebla. 

The small American garrison there had 
201 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

been attacked by the populace soon after 
Scott's advance to Mexico City. Aban- 
doning the rest of Puebla, the Americans 
occupied the citadel and a massive church 
that stood near it on a ridge overlooking 
the town, while most of the i,8oo sick and 
wounded were quartered in the San Jose 
barracks not far below. With not more 
than 500 volunteers and convalescents, 
and a few pieces of captured artillery, the 
commanding officer, Colonel Childs of the 
regular army, had to maintain all three of 
these positions against a large force of local 
irregular troops, who, however, did nothing 
but keep up a futile fire from a perfectly 
safe distance. 

Santa Anna reached Puebla on Septem- 
ber 21 with several thousand Mexican reg- 
ulars and a train of artillery, formally sum- 
moned Colonel Childs to surrender, and 
received a prompt but equally formal refusal. 
Though he had now a splendid opportunity 
to strike Scott a heavy blow, capture much- 
needed supplies, and revive Mexico's hopes 
and power of resistance by what should 
have been an easy victory, Santa Anna, 
instead of pressing the siege, made only a 
202 



TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO 

few feeble and desultory attacks during the 
next week. 

Then, hearing of the approach of a wagon- 
train and escort from Vera Cruz, Santa 
Anna marched to meet it with most of his 
forces on October i. But the train-guard 
had been overtaken and reinforced by a 
newly landed brigade under General Lane, 
while Santa Anna's men rapidly deserted on 
the march. Having easily brushed Santa 
Anna aside and captured two of his guns 
in a spirited skirmish. Lane entered Puebia 
and relieved Childs on October 12. 

After a narrow escape from being cap- 
tured by Lane's cavalry and having been 
summoned by his own government to ap- 
pear before a court of inquiry, Santa Anna 
left Mexico under an American safe-con- 
duct and fled to Jamaica. Though he was 
recalled again as dictator in the fifties, he 
was soon driven out, to return once more in 
1867, when he was imprisoned for conspir- 
acy against the republic, but pardoned and 
released. Santa Anna's long and adven- 
turous life was ended amid poverty and 
neglect in the city of Mexico in 1876. 

Except for a second and uncalled-for 
203 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

invasion of Chihuahua by Colonel Sterling 
Price, the governor of New Mexico, the 
fighting was now over. The Mexican army- 
was reduced to a few thousand men, in 
widely scattered detachments, without a 
head. The American army could have 
marched with Httle or no opposition through 
the rest of Mexico, while the American navy 
had captured or was closely blockading 
every Mexican port. It was time to make 
peace and on the conqueror's terms. 

After Santa Anna's abdication, in the 
absence of a vice-president or secretary of 
foreign affairs, the presiding judge of the 
supreme court, Senor Manuel de la Pena y 
Pena, became provisional President. Like 
Seiior Carbajal in 19 14, Pena y Pena was 
not a great leader of men, but he was a 
jurist of high repute and a peace-loving 
patriot. A provisional government was 
established at Queretaro, and began nego- 
tiations with Mr. Trist. 

A letter from Buchanan, written early In 
October when the news of the failure of the 
September armistice had reached Washing- 
ton, now ordered Trist to withdraw from 
Mexico. Trist accordingly arranged to go 
204 



TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO 

down to Vera Cruz by the next convoy, but 
changed his mind at the importunities of 
the Mexicans and stayed to negotiate a 
treaty on the terms of his original instruc- 
tions. 

As soon as the immediate danger of war 
was removed the Mexican Congress delayed 
for weeks over trifles and haggled for an 
advance payment of the promised indem- 
nity after the terms had been agreed on, 
till the American commissioner and the 
American general came, or pretended to 
come, to the end of their patience. To- 
ward the end of January, Trist ostenta- 
tiously broke off the negotiations, and Scott, 
whose army had been strongly reinforced 
and was unhampered by any armistice, 
talked loudly of marching on Queretaro. 
Though one hundred and fifty miles of 
rough road separated that town from 
Mexico City, the news of that threat 
reached Queretaro in less than two days 
and the order for the Mexican commis- 
sioners at the capital to sign the treaty came 
posting back in something like twenty-four 
hours. 

The treaty was signed, however, not in 
205 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

the city of Mexico but, at the request of 
the Mexican commissioners, in the neigh- 
boring town of Guadalupe Hidalgo, on 
February 2, 1848. 

By this Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 
Mexico ceded to the United States, New 
Mexico, upper California, and Texas to 
the Rio Grande, in return for the pay- 
ment of $15,000,000. Three millions were 
to be paid in cash as soon as the treaty 
should be ratified, and the remainder in 
instalments. The United States also as- 
sumed the unpaid claims of American 
citizens against Mexico, and agreed to 
prevent the Indians from raiding across 
the new frontier — a service that was com- 
muted a few years later for an additional 
payment of $10,000,000. 

Both President Polk and the majority 
of the United States Senate were well 
pleased with the terms of the treaty, and 
so were most of the American people. 
The country had gained what it was 
fighting for, and was weary of war, with 
its expense and bloodshed. But there 
was a formidable opposition in the Senate, 
formed of two diametrically opposite fac- 
206 



TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO 

tions — the extreme Southerners, led by 
Calhoun, who wanted more, if not all, of 
Mexico for additional slave territory, and 
the New England extremists, led by Web- 
ster, who wanted no new territory at all. 
The latter, actuated both by the love of 
freedom and the narrow provincialism that 
characterized the New England of that 
period, were unwittingly helping their bit- 
terest foes, for the rejection of the treaty 
would have meant the resumption of the 
war and, perhaps, the extinction of Mexico 
as a nation. But the middle course, for 
which Polk had firmly stood, prevailed, 
and the treaty was ratified by the vote 
of 38 senators to 14, well over the neces- 
sary two-thirds, on March i, 1848. 

Then followed another tedious period of 
dilatory action on the part of the Mexican 
Government in giving its ratification to 
the now slightly amended treaty. The 
statesmen at Queretaro talked on intermi- 
nably, while General Paredes was hatching 
royalist plots, Santa Anna's partisans were 
busy intriguing for his return, and minor 
uprisings and mutinies broke out con- 
tinuously in one part of the country after 
207 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

another. One Mexican faction that fa- 
vored American rule, even asked General 
Scott to proclaim himself dictator and 
raise a ''Mexican" army of American 
veterans. This tempting offer was, how- 
ever, declined by Scott, who was soon 
afterward ordered to hand over the com- 
mand to his subordinate. General Butler, 
and appear before a court of inquiry on 
charges of attempting to bribe Santa Anna 
into making peace during the negotia- 
tions at Puebla. This court, composed 
of arrny officers who had not served under 
Scott, and were therefore supposed to be 
impartial, also investigated the unseemly 
squabbles that had taken place between 
Scott and Generals Worth and Pillow. 
Though Scott was soon acquitted of some 
of these charges while the rest were dropped, 
this arraignment and trial of a victorious 
general in the presence of his own army 
did more than anything else to impress 
the Mexicans with the power of the United 
States Government. 

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was 
finally ratified and signed on May 30, 
1848. The rearguard of the American 
208 



TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO 

army marched out of Mexico City on 
June 12, and on July 30, the city of Vera 
Cruz and the Castle of San Juan de Ulloa, 
always the last points to be yielded up 
by an invader, were formally evacuated. 



209 



CHAPTER XV 

THE RESULTS OF THE WAR 

"npHE United States forces employed 
A in the invasion of Mexico," says 
Wilcox, "aggregated about 100,000 armed 
men — 26,690 regulars, 56,926 volunteers, 
and the balance in the navy, commis- 
sariat and transportation departments. Of 
this number, 120 officers and 1,400 men 
fell in battle or died from wounds received 
there; 10,800 men perished by disease, 
always more fatal than bullets, and many 
were ruined in health or disabled by wounds 
— in all about 25,000. The cost, exclusive 
of pensions granted in late years, was from 
130,000,000 to 160,000,000 of dollars." * 

But over a million square miles of terri- 
tory had been added to the United States. 
Out of the conquered Mexican provinces 
of California and New Mexico, whose 
southern borders were presently advanced 

♦Wilcox, "History of the Mexican War," p. 567. 
210 



THE RESULTS OF THE WAR 

and rounded out by the Gadsden Purchase, 
have been formed not only the two States 
of CaHfornia and New Mexico, but all of 
Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, most of Colo- 
rado, and parts of Wyoming and Kansas. 
And over the division of these rich spoils of 
the Mexican War began a dispute that 
led directly to the Civil War. 

Representative Brinkerhoff of Ohio had 
prepared an amendment to a bill that was 
introduced in the House of Representa- 
tives in 1846, to appropriate money to 
compensate Mexico for any of her territory 
the United States might forcibly annex. 
But, being unable to obtain the floor him- 
self, Brinkerhoff had his proposed amend- 
ment introduced by Representative Daniel 
Wilmot of Pennsylvania, and therefore, it 
is known in history as the Wilmot Proviso. 

"As an express and fundamental con- 
dition to the acquisition of any territory 
from the Republic of Mexico by the United 
States," demanded the Proviso, "neither 
slavery nor involuntary servitude shall 
exist in any such territory." 

"The Wilmot Proviso," says Professor 
Albert Bushnell Hart, "was the bugle-call 
211 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

which aroused the North to the intention 
of the South to increase the slave States 
beyond Texas, and thus to extend slavery. 
Lincoln once boasted that he had voted 
for the principle of the Wilmot Proviso 
forty-two times in the two years of his 
service in the House." * 

Passed by the House by a large major- 
ity, the Wilmot Proviso was lost in the 
Senate on the last night of the session, 
because a Massachusetts senator, a well- 
meaning but fatal friend of the measure, 
made too long a speech in its favor, and so 
prevented a vote till midnight and ad- 
journment. By the next session, the 
Southerners who had voted for the Proviso 
had now grasped its import and fought it, 
and indeed the sectional line was soon so 
clearly drawn and the feeling on both 
sides so bitter that the Civil War might 
well have broken out ten years earlier 
than it did, if the leaders of each faction, 
Calhoun and Webster, had not made a 
truce with the famous Compromise of 
of 1850. By this, the question of slavery 
in the new territories was left to the de- 

* Hart's "Contemporaries," IV, 38. 
212 



THE RESULTS OF THE WAR 

cision of the men who settled there; the 
doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty/' whose 
memory calls up visions of "Bleeding 
Kansas/' Sharps' rifles, and John Brown 
of Osawatomie. 

Cahfornia's fate was decided a week be- 
fore the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe 
Hidalgo, when gold was discovered in 
Colonel Sutter's mill-race. Over the plains, 
round Cape Horn, or across the Isthmus of 
Panama came the Forty-niners to populate 
California and make it a State — a free 
State. Slavery could not be tolerated in a 
land of highly paid white labor, and when 
the war came California stood by the Union. 
So also did New Mexico, whose people's 
loyalty, however, was greatly stimulated 
by their ancient grudge against Texas. 
From the Mexican War the Southern 
"slave-power" gained only Texas — which 
had entered the Union before the first shot 
was fired at Palo Alto — and the awakened 
hostility of the North. 

"Even the question of slavery," noted 

President Polk in his diary, "is thrown into 

Congress and agitated in the midst of a 

foreign war. ... It is a most wicked agi- 

213 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

tation that can end in no good and must 
produce infinite mischief."* 

"Old Rough and Ready," Zachary Taylor, 
the popular military hero of the war, suc- 
ceeded Polk in the presidency, and four 
years later Brigadier-General Franklin 
Pierce was also elected President, largely 
on his war record. Throughout the coun- 
try veterans were favored candidates for 
every office from President to pound-keeper. 

The Mexican War inspired Lowell to 
write his Biglow Papers — the first great 
American satire. Long after the world has 
forgotten the victories of General Winfield 
Scott it will chuckle over the sayings and 
misadventures of Private Birdofredum 
Sawin. 

In our first war in Mexico, as in the war 
with Spain, we made a slow and expensive 
job of beating a fourth-rate adversary and 
thereby learned how unprepared we were to 
fight a real enemy. Most of this lesson was 
promptly forgotten, but not all. Drill was 
simplified, weapons modernized, and gen- 
eral efficiency increased during the eighteen- 
fifties, both in the regular army and the 

♦"Polk's Diary," p. 347. 
214 



THE RESULTS OF THE WAR 

organized militia. It was the memory of 
his subordinate's brilHant work in Mexico 
that made the aged General Scott beseech 
Colonel Robert E. Lee to take command of 
the United States and not the Virginian 
forces at the outbreak of the Civil War. 
Grant, boldly investing Fort Donelson with 
an army smaller than the garrison it was 
besieging, did so because he "had known 
General Pillow in Mexico and judged that 
with any force, no matter how small, I 
could march up to within gunshot of any 
intrenchment he was given to hold."* 
When Vicksburg fell. Grant received its 
"unconditional surrender" from Pember- 
ton, whom he had last met in the church- 
steeple, where Grant had been training a 
mountain howitzer on the San Cosme Gate 
of Mexico City. Captain Winslow of the 
Kearsarge and Captain Semmes of the Ala- 
hama were old messmates, who had each 
commanded and lost a ship in the blockade 
of Vera Cruz. Mexico supplemented West 
Point and Annapolis as a training-school 
for the Civil War. 

Mexico itself, weary of war and with its 

♦Grant's "Memoirs," I, 241. 
215 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

government strengthened by the three mil- 
Hons of cash indemnity, had a few months 
of respite after the withdrawal of the Amer- 
ican troops. Then the mutinies and revo- 
lutions broke out anew but with a differ- 
ence. It had taken the American invasion 
to make the common people of Mexico 
realize how weak and worthless was the 
army and how selfishly unpatriotic the 
church that had ruled and plundered them 
since the days of Iturbide. The spirit of 
Hidalgo was born again in the great Indian 
patriot Benito Juarez. Under his leader- 
ship the Mexican people had broken the 
power of the military and clerical oligarchy 
when Napoleon III took advantage of our 
own Civil War to set up a sham empire in 
Mexico. But the heroic Juarez kept up 
the struggle in the north, till gathering war- 
clouds in Europe and a strong hint from 
Secretary Seward that Mexico was a good 
place for the French troops to emigrate 
out of, forced the Emperor of the French 
to withdraw Bazaine's army and leave the 
*' Emperor of Mexico" to his fate. Maxi- 
milian, Austrian archduke, sham emperor, 
but brave man, died facing a firing-squad 
216 



THE RESULTS OF THE WAR 

at Puebla with the gallant grace of a 
Charles II. 

"God save the King! Well, that King is gone. 
Ages ago, and the Hapsburg one. 
Shot; but the rock of the Church lives on. 

"God save the King! What matter indeed, 
If King or President succeed 
To a country haggard with sloth and greed ?" * 

If royalty and imperialism were at last 
dead in Mexico, democracy and self-govern- 
ment were not yet born. Juarez, weary 
and old, sank into his grave before the task 
of building up a true republic had been 
fairly begun. The forces of reaction, aided 
now by American capitalists eager for rail- 
road and mining concessions, triumphed in 
the long despotism of Porfirio Diaz. Super- 
ficially there were peace and plenty in the 
land, and historians wrote "finis" to the 
long tale of Mexico's sorrows. They neither 
foresaw that the old anarchy would return, 
once the dictator's hand relaxed, nor did 
they recall this gloomy prophecy made by 
a Mexican in 1850: 

''What must be, must be. Sooner or 

* Bret Harte. 
217 



OUR FIRST WAR IN MEXICO 

later, we shall see ourselves overwhelmed in 
another, or more than one, disastrous war, 
until the flag of the stars floats over the last 
span of the territory which it so much 
covets."* 

* "Noticias," chap. I. 



2l8 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, Lord, 56, log 
Acapulco, 172; road, 177, i79 
Adams, John Quincy, 61, 62; his 

pamphlet on slavery, 65, 66 
Agua Nueva, 127 
Aguinaldo, 124 
Alabama, the, 173, 215 
Alaman, Don Lucas Ignacio, 29- 

32, 34. 37. 38, 66 
Alamo, the, 43-46, 50 
Alexander VI, Papal Bull of, 2 
Allen, Ethan, 40 
Almonte, Senor, 64 
Alvarez, General, 188-190 
Amazoc, 165 
Ampudia, General, 80, 116, 120- 

122, 130, 131 
Anahuac, 33, 34. 38, 185 
Anderson, Captain Robert, iS4 
Angostura, La, 130 
Anton Lizardo, 151, 152 
Apache Canon, 140 
Arab, the, 123 
Arista, General, 81-83, 86, 90. 9i, 

93,94. 114 

Arizona, 211 

Arkansas cavalry, 128, 131. 132, 

Armies, United States and Mexi- 
can compared, 83-88 

Armijo, Governor, 140 

"Army of the Centre," 125 

"Army of the West," the, 139. 
140 

Artillery, Fourth, 134, i77 

Artillery, Mexican, 164 

Atalaya Hill, 160-163 

Atlantic Fleet, the, 196 

Augustin I, 15 ., 

Austin, Moses, 22, 23, 30 

Austin, Stephen Fuller, 23-26, 37, 

39-41 
Ayotla, 171 
Aztecs, the, i8s 



Ballentine's "English Soldier in 

Mexico," 83, 85, 152, IS3 
Bancroft, quoted, 7 
Bazaine's army, 216 
"Bear" party, the, 107 
Beauregard, Lieutenant, 161 
Belem gate, the, 192, 197 
Benham's "Recollections of Buena 

Vista," 129, 135 
Benton, Senator Thomas H., 102, 

104 
Bent's Fort, 140 
Bexar (San Antonio), 19, 21, 23, 

34, 40-42, 45, 53, 119. 125, 172, 

177, 182 
Bishop, Joseph Bucklin, 59 
Bishop's Palace, Monterey, 117- 

" Black Fort, The," 117, "9 

Black Hawk War, 88 

Bonaparte, Joseph, 10 

Bowie, 44-46, 50 

Bradburn, Colonel, 33, 34 

Bragg, Captain, 116, 131, 13S 

Bravo battalion, 178 

Bravo, General, 196 

Brazil, 2 

Brazito, 143 

Brazoria, 33 

Brinkerhoff, Representative, 211 

Brown, John, 213 

Brown, Major, 82 

Brownsville, 80 

Bryant, William CuUen, 149 

Buchanan, 204 

Buena Vista, battle of, 129-137. 

148, 158, 177, 191 
"Buenaventura River, 103 
Bustamante, President, 29, 34 
Butler, General, 208 

Cadillac, Governor, 6 
Cadwalader's brigade, 176, 187, 189 



219 



INDEX 



Calderon, Bridge of, 12 

Calderon, Madame, 73 

Calhoun, John C, 57-59, 207, 212 

CaUfornia, 55, 56, 70, 71, 73, 77- 
79, 97; conquest of, 98-113; 
168, 206, 210, 211, 213 

Callao, 55 

Camargo, 115, 116 

Canada, 56 

Cape Horn, 112 

Carbajal, Senor, 204 

Carranza, General Venustiano, 74, 
124 

Carson, Kit, 109, no 

Casa Mata, the, 186-190 

Castle of Perote, 165 

Castro, General Jose, 103, 104, 
106, 107, 109 

Cathedral Plaza, 119, 120 

Catholic Church, the, 159 

Cerro Gordo, battle of, 159-165, 
174 

Chalco, Lake, 171, 172 

Chapultepec, 185, 186, 189, 190, 
192; battle of, 193-196 

Cherokee Indians, 44 

Chihuahua, 125, 142, 144; battle 
of, 145-148, 204 

Childs, Colonel, 169, 202, 203 

Chippewa, battle of, 151 

Churubusco, 172; battle of, 177- 
183; 184, 191 

Cincinnati, 49 

Ciudad Juarez, 143 

Civil War, the, 211, 212, 215, 216 

Clarke's brigade, 187, 189 

Clay, Henry, 8, 59-61, 68, 77 

Coahuila, 18, 27, 29, 36, 39, 148 

Collingwood, flag-ship, 108, 109 

Colonization Acts, Mexican, 24, 31 

Colorado, 211 

Comanche Indians, 2, 6, 28 

Compromise of 1850, 212 

Congress, frigate, loi, 102, 108, 
109 

Connelley's "Doniphan's Expedi- 
tion," 143 

Contreras, battle of, 174-177 

Cooke's "Conquest of New Mex- 
ico and California," 140, 141 

Corpus Christi, 75, 80 

Cortez, 2, 48, 169, 177, 185 

Cos, General, 41, 43, 4^:, 49, 51 



Coyoacan, 177, 178 
Creek Indians, 44 
Creoles, the, 11 
Cuba, 12 

Dana's "Two Years Before the 

Mast," 100 
Davis, Jefferson, 120, 127, 133, 

134- 137 
Davis's "Jefferson Davis," 86 
"Deaf Smith," 51 
Democratic National Convention 

of 1844, 59, 60 
Diaz, Porfirio, 12, 71, 217 
Dolores, the Cry of, 10, ir 
Doniphan, Colonel, no, 139, 141- 

143, 145, 146, 148 
Drake, Francis, 32, 2>S 
Duncan, Colonel, 116, 118, 189, 

190 
Durango, 148 

El Embrido, 141 
El Encerro, 160 
El Paso, 143-146 
El Telegrafo, 160 
Encarnacion, 127, 128, 136 
English possessions in North 

America, 7, 56 
Enterprise, United States brig, 20 

Fallen Timbers, battle of the, 86 

Fannin, Colonel, 44, 46-48 

Farias, 159 

Farragut, 156 

Ferdinand VII, 11-13, 35 

Filibusters, American, 19, 20, 54 

Flanders, 84 

Flores, Don Mariano, in 

Florida, 7-9, 71, 78; Treaty, 8, 9, 

76 
Fort Brown, 80, 83, 90, 94 
Fort Diablo, 117, 120 
Fort Donelson, 215 
Fort Federacion, 117 
Fort Harrison, 88 
Fort Leavenworth, no, 112, 139 
Fort Libertad, 117 
Fort St. Louis, 3, 4, 8 
Fort Soldado, 117 
Fort Sumter, 154 
Fort Teneria, 117, 119, 120 
Forty-niners, the, 213 



220 



INDEX 



Franco-Spanish War of 17 19, 7 

Fremont, John Charles, 102-107, 
109, 112, 113 

French, explorers in America, 3, 4; 
attempt to found colony in 
Texas, 3, 4; colonization of 
Louisiana, 6; trade with Span- 
ish colonies, 6, 7 ; withdrawal of, 
from Mexico, 216 

Frontiersmen, American, 100, 10 1 

Funston, General, 157 

Gadsden Purchase, the, 211 

Gaines, General, 66 

Galveston, the island of, 19 

Galveston Bay, 27, 33, 49 

Garland, Brigadier-General, 120, 
187, 189, 200 

Garrison, Professor, quoted, 69, 70 

Gillespie, Lieutenant, 102, 104, 
106 

Goliad, 19, 21, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, so 

Gonzales, 40, 41, 43, 48 

Grant, U. S., 121, 198; his "Mem- 
oirs" quoted, 88, 161, 162, 190, 

215 

Great Britain, 55-57. 78, 105, 109 
Grenville, Sir Richard, 44 
Grijalva, Juan de, 151 
Guadalajara, 11 
Guadalupe Hidalgo, 198, 201; 

treaty of, 206-208, 213 
Guanajuato, 11 
Guerrero, President, 29 

Harney, Colonel, 170, 180 

Harrisburg, 48 

Harrison, General, 57 

Hart, Professor Albert Bushnell, 

quoted, 70, 211, 212 
Harte, Bret, 217 
Hawkins, John, 32 
Hay, John, quoted, 38 
Herrera, President, 73 
Hidalgo, 10-12 
Horseshoe Bend, 44 
Houston, General Sam, 44, 46, 

48-51, 53 
Huerta, General Victoriano, 74, 

124 
Hughes's "Doniphan's March," 

144 



Iguala, Plan of, 35 

lUinois regiment. Second, 135 

Independencia battalion, 178 

Indiana regiments: Second volun- 
teers, 131; Third, 132, 135 

Indians, Aztec, 185; Cherokee, 
44; Comanche, 2, 6, 28; Creek, 
44; Navajo, 142; Pueblo, 138; 
Tejas, i; Zuni, 142 

Infantry regiments, United States: 
First, 119; Third, 119; Fourth, 
119, 121, 198; Fifth, 90, 93, 
189; Eighth, 93; Tenth, 194 

Isabella, Queen, 38 

Iturbide, General Eduardo, 9, 14, 
15, 23,35. SI, 74, 216 

Iztaccihuatl, 170, 171 

Jackson, Andrew, 19, 38, 44, 56, 

58, 62, 70 
Jackson, "Stonewall," 174 
Jalapa, 159, 163, 169 
Jamaica, 203 
Jesuit missions, 98 
Jones, Adjutant-General, 123 
Jones, Commodore Ap Catesby, 

54-56, 66, loi 
Jornada del Muerto, the, 142 
Juarez, Benito, 216, 217 

Kansas, 139, 211, 213 

Kearny, General Philip, 85, no- 

112, 139-142, 181 
Kearsarge, the, 215 
Kendall, George W., his "War 

Between the United States and 

Mexico" quoted, 183 
Kennedy's "Texas" quoted, 26 
Kentucky regiments, 131, 132, 

135 
Klamath Lake, 104 

La Bahia (Goliad), 19, 21, 40, 43t 

44, 46, 47, 50 
La Canada, 141 
Lafitte, Jean, 19, 20 
La Joya, 159 
Landero, General, 156 
Lane, General, 203 
Larkin, Consul, loi, 102, 104, 105 
La Salle, Robert Cavalier de, 3. 8, 

76 



221 



INDEX 



Lee, Captain Robert E., i6i, 162, 

17s, 176, 215 

Lee, Light-Horse Harry, 86 
Liberty bell, Mexican, 10 
Lincoln, Abraham, 68, 212 
Lobos Island, 151 
Loma de Independencia, the, 117, 

118 
Long, James, 20 
Los Angeles, iii 
Louis XIV, 3 

Louisiana, 6, 22, 23, 26, 114 
Louisiana Purchase, the, 7-9, 76 
Lowell's Biglow Papers, 214 
Lundy, Benjamin, 66 
Lundy's Lane, 151 

M'Carty's "National Songs," 89 

McClellan, George B., 163 

Maas, General, 200 

Magruder's field-battery, 174 

Manga de Clavo, 160 

Manila Bay, battle of, 96 

Marshall, Chief Justice, 16 

Martinez, 23 

Matagorda Bay, 3 

Matamoros, 80, 82, 94, 114 

Maximilian, 15, 186, 216 

May, Lieutenant-Colonel, 92, 127, 
132 

Mesa, the, in 

Mexicalcingo, 171, 172 

Mexican Army, 83-87 

Mexican Constitution of 1824, 
16-18, 36 

Mexican Empire, 14 

Mexican National Military Acad- 
emy, 87, 186, 19s 

Mexican National Naval Acad- 
emy, 196 

Mexican War of Independence, 
10-21, 35, 48, 71, 99, 139 

Mexico, proclamation of inde- 
pendence of, 9, 14; govern- 
ment of, 16-18; unpaid debts 
of, 71, 72; made centralized re- 
public, 39; declaration of war 
with, 96 

Mexico City, 4, 15, 23, 37, 54, 126, 
158, 172, 180, 182; fall of, 185- 
199; 200, 201, 209, 2 IS 

Milam, Ben, 42, 43 

Mills, Major, x8i 



Minon, General, 127, 128, 136 
Missions, Spanish, 5, 6, 8, 98, 99, 

138 
Mississippi, frigate, 155 
Mississippi Rifles, 120, 127, 132, 

133. 13s 
Mississippi River, 3, 22 
Missouri Compromise, the, 62, 68 
Missouri Mounted Volunteers, 

First, 139, 143, 144. i47-i49 
Molino del Rey, the, 185-191, 

193, 195 
Monclova, 125 
Monroe, President, 8 
Monterey, 55, 66, 81, 98, loi, 

103, 104, 106, 108, 109; battle 

of, 115-122; 124, 127, 157, 198 
Montezuma, 15 
Montgomery, Commander, 107, 

108 
Morales, General Juan, 155, 156, 

188 
Mosquito flotilla, the, 155 
"Muscovites," the, 98 

Nacogdoches, 21, 66 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 7, 11, 12 

Napoleon III, 216 

Natchitoches, 6, 27 

Navajo Indians, 142 

Nevada, 211 

New Mexico, 53, 54, no, 138; an- 
nexation of, 141, 142; 168, 206, 
210, 211, 213 

New Orleans, 6, 7, 22, 27, 149 

New Spain, the Kingdom of, 4-6, 
9, 14, 177 

New York, 28 

New York volunteers, 179, 180, 
194 

North America, early European 
settlers in, 2, 3 

"Noticias por la Guerra," 146, 
166, 181, 2X8 

Nueces River, 75, 76, 81 

Nuevo Leon, 75, 81 

O'Brien, Lieutenant, 134, 177 
O'Donoju, 14, 51 
Ofiate, Don Juan de, 138 
Oregon, 68, 78, 104 
Oregon trail, the, 103 



222 



INDEX 



Pacific squadron, loi, British, io8 
Padierna, battle of, 174 
"Palmetto Regiment," the, 179 
Palo Alto, battle of, 83-86, 89, 108, 

213 
Panama, 32 
Panama Railroad, 154 
Paredes, General Mariano, 73-75. 

81, 104, 123, 207 
Parr as, 125 
Patterson, General, 153, iS4. 158, 

161 
Pedregal, the, 172-175 
Pemberton, 215 , . , 

Pena y Pena, Senor Manuel de la, 

204 
Pennsylvania regiments, 169, 181, 

194 
Penon Viejo, 171 
Peon, the Mexican, 17. 18, 29 
Peru, 2, 32 
Phihppines, the, 124 
Picayune, New Orleans, 183 
Pico, Don Andres, no, in 
Pico, Governor Pio, 106, 107, 109 
Pierce, Franklin, 179. iSo, 214 
Pike's "Battle of Buena Vista, 

Pillow, General, 162, 163, 170, 
173, 177. 187, 193. 194. 208, 215 

Pineda, Alvarez de, i, 8 

Pizarro, 2 

Plan del Rio, 158-160 

Point Isabel, 80-82 

Polk, James K., 60, 61, 63, 64, 
68-71, 73-79, 88, 95-97, lOS, 
112, 123, 126, 139, 167, 206, 
207, 213, 214 

Portsmouth, U. S. S., 107 

Portugal, 2 

Price, Colonel Sterling, 141, 204 

Princeton, cruiser, 57 

Puebla, 165, 167, 169, 170, 201- 
203, 208, 217 

Pueblo Indians, 138 

Queretaro, 204, 205, 207 
Quitman, Brigadier-General, 120, 
121, 165, 170, 193-197 

Ramirez, General, 188 
Resaca de la Palma, battle of, 91- 
95, 104, 108, 127 



"Revenge," battle of the, 44 

Reynolds's battery, 133 

Richman's " California," 98 

Ridgely's battery, 93, ii6 

Riego, 13 

Riley's brigade, 176 

Ringgold, Major, 90 

Rio Grande, the, 75-77, 80, 81, 
91, 94, 114, IIS, 125, 143 

Rives's "The United States and 
Mexico" quoted, 16, 20, 21, 
74, 109, 154, 171. 191, 192, 197 

Sabine, the, 33 

Sacramento Valley, 100, 104 

Sacrificios, island of, 151 

St. Lawrence, the, 3 

Saltillo, 117, 118, 135, 127, 129, 

132, 136, 148, 149 
San Angel, 173, i7S-i77 
San Antonio de Bexar, 19, 21, 23, 
34, 40-42, 45, 53, 119. 125, 172, 
^77, 182 
San Augustin, 172, i73» i7o, 183 
San Bias, 1 1 
San Cosme gate, the, 192, 196, 

198, 215 
San Diego, 98, no, in 
San Domingo, 117 
San FeUpe, 36 
San Francisco, 98, loi, 107 
San Francisco Bay, 107, 108 
San Gabriel River, in 
San Geronimo, 175 
San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 7 
San Jacinto, battle of, 49-51, 53, 

66, 76 
San Jos6 barracks, 202 
San Juan de Ulloa, 155, 156, 209 
San Luis Potosi, n, 123-125, 

127, 129, 136, 158 
San Mateo, Convent of, 178, i79» 

x8i 
San Pascual, no 
San Patricio, battalion of, 178 
Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 
34-36, 38, 39, 41, 43-45, 47- 
51, 66, 72-75, 123-128, 130, 
133-136, 152, 158-160, 163-165, 
167, 172, 174, 175, 179, 183, 184, 
188, 191, 198, 200-204, 207, 208 
Santa Barbara, 112 
Santa F^, 54, "O. 138-142 



223 



INDEX 



Santa Fe trail, 139 

Scott, General Winfield, 126, 127, 

150-153, 155, 157, 159, 161, 

162, 164, 165, 167-171, 173, 176, 

177, 182-185, 187, 191, 198, 199, 

200-202, 205, 208, 214, 215 
Seminole War, 88 
Semmes, Captain Raphael, his 

"Service Afloat and Ashore" 

quoted, 173; 215 
Serro, Brother Junipero, 98 
Seven Years' War, the, 7 
Seward, Secretary, 216 
Sharps's rifles, 213 
Sherman, WilUam Tecumseh, 112 
Shields's brigade, 161, 163, 179, 

180 
Slavery, 17, 29, 56, 60, 61, 65-69, 

77, 212, 213 
Slidell, John, 70, 73 
Sloat, Commodore, loi, 102, 108, 

109 
Smith, General Persifer F., 175, 

176 
Sonoma, 107 
South Africa, 85 
South Carolina regiment, 179, 194, 

197 
Spanish, explorations in Texas, i, 

2; possession of Texas, 2-7; 

Colonial system, 4 
Spanish-American War, 12 
Spanish Cortes, or Parliament, 13 
"Squatter Sovereignty," 213 
Standish, Miles, 100 
Stockton, Commodore, loi, loS, 

109, III 
Sumner, Major, 187, 189, 190 
Sutter, Colonel, 213 



Tacubaya causeway, the, 192, 
195, 196 

Tamaulipas, 75, 81 

Tampico, 36, 91, 94, 124, 125 

Taos, 141 

Taylor, General Zachary, 75, 77, 
80, 82, 83, 86, 88-90, 92, 96, 
114-116, 118, 119, 121-123, 
125-131, 133, 135-137, 150, 
151, 214 

Tejas, Indians, i 

Tennessee, First, volunteers, 120 



Tete-de-pont, the, at Churubusco, 
177-181 

Texas, early history of, 1-9; a 
Mexican state, 18; attempts to 
found American colonies in, 
19, 20; in 182 1 almost de- 
populated, 20, 21; American 
migration to, 23-31; question 
of religion in, 25, 26; growth of 
American population, 27, 28; 
negro slavery in, 29; Mexican 
restrictions on trade, 31-33; 
uprising in smuggler affair, 33, 
34; conventions of 1832 and 
1833, 36, 37; offer of United 
States to purchase, 38; third 
general convention, 40; hos- 
tihties with Mexico, 40-54; in- 
dependence declared, 48, and 
recognized, 51, 52; admitted 
to the Union, 58-69; 109, 114, 
206, 213 

Texcoco Lake 171 

Thornton, Captain, 81, 82, 95 

Ticonderoga, 40 

Tierra Caliente, 158 

Totten, Colonel, 154 

Travis, William B., 38, 39, 44- 
46, 50 

Treaty, Florida, 8, 9 

Treaty of Cordova, 14, 51 

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 
206-208, 213 

Treaty of San Ildefonso, 7 

Trist, Nicholas, 167, 204, 205 

Twiggs, General, 85, 119, 154, 
158, 161-163, 170, 177, 179, 181 

Tyler, President, 56, 57, 61-64 

Upshur, Secretary, 56, 57 
Utah, 211 

Vaca, Nunez Cabeza de, i 

Valencia, General, 174-176 

Van Buren, Martin, 58 

Van Slycke, Cuyler, 138 

Velasco, 33, 34, 36 

Vera Cruz, 6, 32, 72, 73, 84, 123, 
126, 143, 144; siege of, 151- 
157; 164, 168, 169, 196, 200, 

203, 205, 209, 215 

Vicksburg, 215 

Villa, General Pancho, 48, 124 



224 



INDEX 



Vince's Bridge, 51 
"Voltiguers," the, 194 

"Walnut Springs," 117 
War of 1812, ISO, 156 
War of Jenkins's Ear, 32 
Washington, 41, 130 
Wayne, Mad Anthony, 86 
Webster, 207, 212 
Wellington, Duke of, 169 
Wilcox's "History of the Mexi- 
can War," 210 
Wilmot, Daniel, 211 
Wilmot Proviso, the, 211, 212 
Wilson, President, 74 
Winslow, Captain, 215 
Wool, General, 125, 142, 148 



Worth, General, 118-121, 125, 
152, 153. 165, 166, 170, 172- 
174, 177-181, 183, 187, 188, 
198, 200, 208 

Wyoming, 211 

Xenophon's Anabasis, 149 
Xochimilco, Lake, 171 

Yell's Arkansas Cavalry, 128 
Yellow fever, 168 
Yerba Buena, 107 
Yucatan, 53 

Zacatecas, 11 

Zavala, 39 

Zufii Indians, 142 



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